Fermanagh U-17 boss Maurice McLaughlin and his players were supposed to be gearing up for their Ulster Championship quarter-final tussle with Down.

On Tuesday night, in the pouring rain in Garrison, the management and squad were fine-tuning their skills and tactics for Saturday’s game.

However, yesterday morning (Wednesday), the news broke that underage games would not be played as part of the current Coronavirus restrictions.

It was eventually confirmed by Croke Park around lunchtime yesterday that all underage fixtures would be postponed from Thursday.

McLaughlin admitted that the lack of clarity around the whole situation has left a bitter taste in his mouth and he questioned how the GAA had no contingency plan in place for this.

“My most frustrating and disappointing feeling this morning is the lack of clarity,” said McLaughlin.

“Everyone knew that this was a possibility. There was always a feeling there that to allow the senior intercounty championship to go ahead, the underage would be pulled.

“It was a fear if you were involved with minor teams. If we felt like that, surely Croke Park had that knowledge, and had to have had those conversations?” he said.

Alongside his own frustration, McLaughlin is disappointed for his players who have put in a serious effort to get ready for this game.

“We got together on December 1 last year, and we’ve been together since then, which is the guts of a year.

“For those lads and the effort they have put in throughout lockdown, the way that they stay connected, attended Zoom meetings, did their individual training programmes, and the way they have returned since September 14 – I mean, when you take all that into consideration, the level of disappointment they must be facing on an individual basis pales in comparison to my own personal disappointment.

“I feel for them, because I have firsthand witnessed the effort that they have put in over the previous 11 months.”

McLaughlin also feels that the way the story broke should not have been allowed to happen, and does not shine a good light on the GAA.

“People talk about mental health. These guys’ hopes were raised that their championship would go ahead.

“To suddenly have that dashed – and to have it dashed, finding out from media outlets at 8am this morning [Wednesday] is not the way we want our organisation run.

“If this was going to happen, we should have been in a position to have that information before anybody else.”

In the build-up to the Down game, the Fermanagh manager had been delighted with how his players have looked after themselves during the Coronavirus pandemic.

Weekly Zoom calls with former and current players and managers, along with individual programmes to keep fitness levels up, meant that when the players returned to collective training in September, they were in a good position to kick on and improve.

“I suppose, look, for everybody it has been a very, very strange year,” said McLaughlin.

“From our perspective, when we broke up we looked at it, both myself and Mark McHugh, and we decided to do a good bit of stuff with the lads through Zoom calls, and through individual programmes, which was mainly more for their mental health than anything else at that stage, because none of us were sure there was going to be any football at all.

“And then, as it became more apparent, we got them individuals programmes that they could do on their own, as regards running and keeping their levels of fitness up.

‘Motivated’

“We had a good few guest speakers that kept them very motivated and interested for the Summer.”

Tomás O’Sé, Lee Keegan, Michael Murphy, Ryan McMenamin and Conor McManus were a few of the guests who spoke to the U-17 panel, and McLaughlin believes that his squad have really taken on board what was spoken about by such successful footballers.

“You can see the way they have come back what they have got from these speakers, who have been exposed to that level, and what they have done and what it has taken for them to get to where they are in the game at the minute.

“Mark McHugh deserves great credit – he was fit to source a lot of those speakers for us.

“When we returned on September 14, they actually came back in very good shape. Since then they have trained very hard as a squad and, really, we couldn’t have asked any more from them.

“In very difficult times, it’s a credit to themselves that they stuck with this, and the shape they are in is really a testimony to that effort that they put in over lockdown,” added McLaughlin.

Following yesterday’s announcement, when these players will get the chance to show just how much they have come on is anybody’s guess