Fermanagh manager Joe Baldwin was delighted to see his side take the scalp of a fancied Mayo side in Ederney on Saturday, but he was not about to let his players get carried away with the victory, with Baldwin urging them in the huddle after the game to get the feet straight back on the ground and focus on the challenges ahead.

“Straight after the game, I said to the boys to get the feet back on the ground,” said Baldwin.

“We have to build on it and try and put two back to back now. Our next league game is our last home game, and as you saw with Mayo, travelling away is notoriously hard.

“One win is not going to keep you in this division and two wins mightn’t keep you in this division, so we have to get straight back to work,” he stressed.

Sunday’s game against the Westerners was a tight affair and Baldwin was pleased with the character shown, especially at the end as Mayo went looking for a late goal to snatch the victory, only for goalkeeper Mark Curry to make a crucial save.

“The important thing was to try and get the win, because the outlook we have today would have been very different if the late shot they had [had] gone in, that would have been the same result two weeks in a row, and that would have been fairly hard to take.

“The character of the boys – for Mark Curry to make that save and to have the likes of Sean Corrigan, Brian Teehan and Luca McCusker back defending that showed how much it meant to the boys to try and get that win.

“We’re delighted to get the win and we are sitting in a reasonable place within the division at the minute,” he added.

Fermanagh had started Sunday’s contest slowly as Mayo pushed into an early four-point lead, but having grown into the game, Baldwin could only see one winner.

“We’ve been in this situation a few times where we have been down but I have every confidence in them, and probably from about 15 minutes in I couldn’t see us losing that game.

“I knew it was going to be tight, but I know what the boys can do.

“We maybe didn’t score for a period of ten minutes in the second half but we defended stoutly from then on in.

“I believed we were going to get a result, but we have to work on cutting down fouls – they scored 10 or 11 frees and if we can cut that down, we will be a serious outfit,” he said.

Fermanagh went into the game without the likes of Danny Teague, Aidan Flanagan and Ciaran Breslin while Francis McBrien was only fit enough to take his place on the bench, so to have taken the spoils shows that they are beginning to build a competitive squad, which Baldwin knows is vital.

“The reality is that those boys who were missing are going to have to work really hard to get in, the next day. We are trying to build a squad that when you walk into that changing room on match day, and you haven’t got the work done, you know that there is somebody beside you who has the work done and is going to take your place.

“We are trying to have a work ethic that the boys know that they have to do – what they have to do to, first of all, get their place on the team, and then keep their place on the team.

“It takes a squad to go through the National League and then into the Championship.”

The focus now though for Fermanagh will be that game against Roscommon, and Baldwin is expecting a bounce from them after manager Francis O’Halloran stepped down in the wake of the loss to Louth.

“The Roscommon manager, Francis O’Halloran, has stepped down from his position and I’m sure they will be looking for a bounce from a new manager. At the same time, it is another opportunity for us with a home game to try and claim another big scalp.

“There is not much between any of the teams in the division; results so far have shown that, so we will just take it one game at a time and we’ll focus our attentions on Roscommon,” he concluded.

 

New subscription deal - Start your subscription in our end of winter sale. Enjoy your first month for just £1. Or try our best value deal of one year for £41.60. Click here to subscribe