The Fermanagh Ladies journey is still on course for its final destination following their four point victory over London in Clones last Saturday.

Jonny Garrity’s side booked their place in the All-Ireland Junior Final in a game Jonny believes they made hard work for themselves at times.

“We are delighted. I thought we had a slow start and probably the last five minutes we made life harder for ourselves than we should have,” explained Jonny.

“In between we were sensational.

“To hit 14 points in a row, it’s going to take you a long way in any game of football.”

London began the more intent of the sides according to Jonny, but when the Erne Ladies did settle into the game the Exiles found it hard to live with them.

“We knew ourselves that we hadn’t really started even after 20 minutes but we felt quite comfortable even though we weren’t playing well because we knew that we had strength on the bench and strength on the field that hadn’t really began to play so it came as no surprise when we got a few in a row and once we got our tails up there was no stopping us.

“They had direct players, they had dangerous players especially in the inside line and their centre forward Hannah Noonan so they caused us a lot of problems but we felt that at some point our conditioning would come into play and I think the intense start that London managed they probably ran out of steam and we came into the ascendancy then and they couldn’t match us for a good 30 to 40 minutes of the game and that has made all the difference.”

To the fore in that dominance was full-forward Eimear Smyth, who kicked nine of the 16 points, but Jonny was full of praise for his whole forward unit.

“She was brilliant again, six points from play, she scored a few free kicks and her general play was excellent but she wasn’t alone. There were a lot of very good performances. I thought the forwards in general were excellent.

“Eimear was brilliant but she was certainly not alone in that.”

With London dispatched, Fermanagh turn all their focus towards Louth in the All-Ireland final and Jonny knows that they will have to improve on their performance if they are going to stand a chance of winning the All-Ireland Junior Championship for the second time in three years.

And with the experience of those in the squad from the triumphant 2017 and 2014 teams, Jonny has a side with players that have done it all before and he will be relying on them to make that experience count on September 15.

“Savouring the win is over and done with. We are now in preparation mode for an All-Ireland final.

“It’s brilliant to get there but we don’t want to get there only to fall short so everything we can possibly do we are doing to ensure we go out and perform on the day and bring an All-Ireland title home.

“We got away with it this time but if we get off to the same start against Louth you know the game could be over before it starts so we will be working very, very hard to ensure that we don’t get off to a slow start. So we can try to get into the sort of rhythm that we found towards the end of the first half throughout the second,” commented Garrity.