On Saturday afternoon Tomás Corrigan was on the pitches at St. Michael’s College practising his kicking. In particular he was hitting kicks from the sideline. He was visualising being in Brewster Park and he was striking the ball well. Fast forward 24 hours and he’s standing on the sideline in Brewster Park with the ball in hand. There’s a bit more pressure with this one though as Fermanagh trail by a point to Roscommon with the game in added on time. Corrigan motions to Sean Quigley that he will take the kick and for a brief moment the image of a certain other sideline kick at the Enniskillen ground came to his mind.

His effort could not have been hit any better, the ball flew over the bar and the sides were level. Moments later Fermanagh were on the attack again and Quigley fired over what proved to be the winner to cap off a superb late comeback from Pete McGrath’s side “When I was lining up to take it for a second the memory of Colm Bradley’s shot (against Meath in 2004 to send the game into extra time) popped into my head,” said Corrigan. “I had been practising them up on the St. Michael’s pitches the day before the game and I’d been hitting them well although if I’d known it was in injury time I probably wouldn’t have went for it! To be honest, I thought there was more time left than that but it was great that it went over and I suppose with any of these things there’s a bit of luck with it!” After the final whistle there was jubiliation as the Fermanagh fans flooded on to the pitch and Corrigan says that it was a familiar face that he encountered first.

“You could see what it meant to the Fermanagh people. My cousin, Collie Clarke, is from Longford but is a massive Fermanagh supporter and has been coming to Fermanagh games for years, he was the first man I met and lifted me up in the air. It was brilliant seeing Fermanagh fans so happy,” he added.

And the forward was simply delighted to get over the line and not have to listen to anymore talk of plucky losers.

“It’s just a great feeling to finally get over the line. We came back from eight points down against Cavan a fews year ago and just lost out by a point so it was just nice to be on the other end of it for once.

“We’ve probably had more moral victories than any county in Ireland over this last couple of years and didn’t want another one. We went for broke in the second half and we were rewarded with the win. I thought we showed great character, mental strength and some great skill as well.” However, it did not look good for Fermanagh with five minutes to go as they trailed by five points. The Kinawley man though never felt that they were out of the game.

“I always thought that there was plenty of time left for us to tag on the points. We just had to be very clinical with the chances we got, and we were,” he commented.

Fermanagh had went in at the break five points behind but they had chances in the first half and Corrigan says that they were confident if they could correct some of the things that they were not doing so well then they had every chance to go on and win the game.

“We had most of the possession in the first half but there were two things; Roscommon were set up well and then we were trying to run it down the middle which played into their hands. We kept getting turned over and any chances that we did get our shooting was wayward. We said at half time we would attack the wings and we got more joy out of that and our shooting was much better as well. Going in at half time we knew that if we tweaked those two things the game was there for us, we just had to make those changes which we did.” After he had fired over the equaliser, Corrigan knew that there was every chance they would get an opportunity to win the game.

“At that point we were controlling midfield and I knew we were going to win that next kick out. It was a great delivery in by Richie and Sean leapt up like a salmon and showed great mental strength. He wasn’t having his best game by his own high standards but it was an absolutely fantastic score and when the final whistle went I couldn’t believe it,” he said.

The win leaves Fermanagh one game away from an All Ireland quarter-final and this side are putting Fermanagh football back on the map.

“Pete’s message from the start of the year has been about leaving the Fermanagh jersey in a better place than we got it. You see a lot of Donegal and Kerry jerseys about this last number of years but it has struck me that there is not that many going about wearing the Fermanagh jersey so that’s something that we as a team spoke about at the start of the year and we said that we would work as hard as we could to put the Fermanagh jersey in a good place again.” Achieving that spot in the last eight though is going to take another substantial effort. Monday morning’s draw pitted the Ernemen against Westmeath in a tie that will be played in Breffni Park on Saturday July 25 at 5pm and the attacker admits that Sunday’s win has been quickly put to bed and the focus has switched to the Breffni encounter.

“We enjoyed winning on Sunday and it was nice being in the winners enclosure but when the draw was made on Monday morning the focus turned straight away to next Saturday. There is a massive carrot dangling in front of us but it is up to us to go and grasp it, nothing is going to come easy at this stage of the championship so we’ll assess what we did well and what we can improve on. You just try and raise the bar for the next day, that’s all you can do.

“Westmeath are similar to ourselves in that they have had a few barren years but they had a sensational victory over Meath who they had never beaten in the championship and there were scenes of jubiliation after that game as well. They then came up against the juggernaut in Dublin but I would not read too much into that because I can’t see anyone beating Dublin at the minute they way they are going. It will be a very tough game and it will come down to the same things that all games do; who is the more hungry, who has the mental strength and who makes the best decisions on the pitch when the pressure comes on.”