Fermanagh manager Ryan McMenamin is happy to see some sort of light at the end of the tunnel following the GAA’s release of their roadmap to a safe return to games.

Within that, the inter-county season is scheduled to start no sooner than October 17 and will come after an 11 week window for club activity, starting on the weekend commencing July 31.

No inter-county calendar though will be produced until the GAA proceeds into phase three which is due to be on June 29.

“You don’t know what competition it is going to be as they haven’t said yet what the championship is going to look like or whether we are going to play out the league.

“The GAA have probably held back on it to see how things go and we’ve waited this long so I think we can wait another three weeks.

“You can though focus now on playing and for the players, they can look ahead to being back out in August playing club football,” said McMenamin.

Collective inter-county training is not permitted to resume until September 14 which will give the county teams at least five weeks to prepare as a unit for their championship.

McMenamin states though that players have been working away on their own individual programmes.

“We won’t have a pre-season as such, whatever the players get done in the next six or seven weeks is probably the players pre-season and they will also be in with their clubs and we will probably have to monitor that. The lads have been forwarding the results of their work to us so we know where they are at and where they need to get to.

“The boys look after themselves anyway all year round and we took the laid back approach at the start of this and weren’t sore on them over the last 12 weeks or so. As long as they kept themselves in reasonable shape we were happy enough. The players are happy enough and in fairness I think they have enjoyed the break.

“You can’t start collective training as a county until September 14 so it is going to be hard but we will have to manage.

“The lads are all working away at their own individual programmes and they are in good enough shape at the minute. Hopefully they will get some club league games and then championship into them. There is going to be a lot of juggling about with them,” added the former Tyrone winner.

However, with players coming back to the county set up after club championship action McMenamin is expecting them to be match sharp.

“That’s the benefit of having it, you will be expecting the players to have had plenty of match time and football coming in. Of course you will have to factor in injuries and that but that’s part and parcel of it,” said the Dromore native.

And he says that he will be keeping an eye out for those impressing on the club scene with the door not shut on the squad.

“You will definitely look at boys and if there is someone standing out you will probably look to bring them in.

“The way I’m looking at it is that there is a high possibility that one season is going to run in to the other so if anybody is coming in it will be with an eye for the next season. The door is not closed for anybody else coming in.”