Fermanagh captain Eoin Donnelly was left disappointed with their second half performance as Down secured their place in the Ulster Championship semi-final with a seven-point victory at Brewster Park.

The home side had been in contention for 40 minutes but a Down goal swung the tie the way of the Mournemen and they went on to run out convincing victors in the end.

“It was frustrating,” said Donnelly.

“We knew at half time that the game was there to be won. We had plenty of ball in the first half and we had plenty of the play up to a point but we made too many unforced errors, too many turn overs and we were just giving Down more and more energy.

“It was a winnable game and we are disappointed that we came away without really putting it up to them in the second half. The goal pulled them away and we were never able to get into the game after that.”

Fermanagh had the greater possession in the first half but were guilty of far too many unforced errors.

“The mistakes were mostly unforced, it was our play being poor rather than us being forced into those mistakes and it allowed them to hit us on the counter-attack which we knew they would look to do.

“We wanted to have control of the ball and we wanted to make sure that the ball was going dead and we were getting frees and scores and keeping the scoreboard ticking over and unfortunately we weren’t able to do that,” stated Donnelly.

The defeat brought the curtain down on 2020 for Fermanagh and Donnelly admits it is one that they will look to draw a line under.

It has been a frustrating and tough year. We felt over the last couple of years within the group that we were improving our play and building.

“But there was such a huge turnover this year in players and obviously we had a change of management and then such a big break with lockdown.

“That affected training and it affected players who were available with the likes of Che not being able to come back to play for us.

“It has not been a great year for us and like many other people we would like to draw a line under 2020. You just have to look ahead now and move on,” he added.

On a positive side of things, Donnelly feels that the injection of youth has helped and he is hopeful that more will follow into the set up.

“In fairness to the management, they have been able to - and they have had to - bring in the likes of Sean, Luke and Josh who made appearances in the last two league games and then in the championship and they were probably among our best performers in the last three games so that’s a positive.

“You want to see young lads coming in and making an impact and these lads stepped up to the mark and haven’t looked out of place at all.

“Hopefully they can now inspire some of the other lads around their age group and younger to make the step up as well.

“These young lads will hopefully now stay on and become the mainstays for Fermanagh in the years ahead.

“Hopefully we can get a squad in place ahead of next year and keep that squad together and start to build and have a team that can compete again,” he said.