Fermanagh's Allstar cast
IT was once a badge of honour. In recent times though, Peter McGinnity has been getting needled by the tag.
He recalls a June day in Brewster Park, a good month before Fermanagh made this summer their own.
Meath had travelled late in the evening looking for revenge, Brian Carty had spotted McGinnity. The Erne legend heard what he has heard a million times before. "There goes Peter McGinnity, Fermanagh's one and only Allstar." Not for long, McGinnity thought to himself. And after this sensational summer, the entire country would be inclined to agree with him.
Whatever happens tomorrow, Barry Owens and Marty McGrath will come close to stripping McGinnity of that moniker. So too will Mark Little and Eamon Maguire, the sensations of Fermanagh's summer, the senior footballers who look almost too young for minors.
All summer, McGinnity has been patted on his back for what himself and Dom Corrigan have done with St Michael's of Enniskillen. The constant praise has stripped away the inferiority complex that hung over Fermanagh footballers like a dark cloud.
"I don't know," the legendary forward says. "Perhaps, Michael's helped in a couple of areas. At an early age, players won more games against supposedly stronger counties than they lost and players were exposed to better teams. But, Michael's does not explain Little or Maguire."
Explaining Little and Maguire goes a long way to explaining the amazing story of Fermanagh this season.
As Stephen Maguire asked prophetically a couple of months ago, "who's to say Mark Little or Eamon Maguire won't become as big a name as Tom Brewster or Raymie Gallagher in Fermanagh football over the next four or five years?"
It has only taken a couple of months. Dom Corrigan believes the two flying wing-forwards have improved with every game. McGinnity, his co-coach at Michael's, thinks that for any side to beat Fermanagh now, they need to negate their flanks.
"Those two have made the difference this year," McGinnity proclaims. "Fermanagh were always solid in defence and midfield, but needed a little bit more zest in the forward line. They have found that in Little and Maguire, they have come in with real enthusiasm, enthusiasm that might have been missing from other players.
"Every team we have faced this year has had to confront the same problem. How do you mark them? If you try to follow them, they are just going to burn you with their speed.
"And if you do decide to stick to them, well they have so much boundless energy and speed, they are back 20 yards in front of their own goal and seconds later, they have darted to 20 yards in front of the opposition goal. No half-back can deal with that.
"If you try to sit back and let them run at you, with the pace those two lads have, it is very hard to tackle them without fouling them. They have been Fermanagh's most potent weapon all year. There are really no other footballers in the country like them. Stephen Kelly in Limerick is the only other comparable player."
As McGinnity points out, Little and Maguire have grown up playing football the Fermanagh way - they have learnt how to hold the ball.
It is a style Charlie Mulgrew has crafted onto his team.
"In Fermanagh at schools and under-age level, you learn to keep hold of the ball. Unlike Kelly, both of these lads have grown up handling the ball all the time, they are not afraid to hold it when there is no option to use it.
"Any team playing Fermanagh is going to have change their half-back line to figure out a way to deal with them. When Meath played us, Sean Boylan put Trevor Giles at left half-back because he wanted him to spray the ball into the forward line. I reckon it was the worst 20 minutes of Giles' career. Little just tortured him."
Twenty-two years after his vintage season, when he scored one of the great Ulster final goals, the Roslea man finally gets to see Fermanagh contest an All-Ireland semi-final. Apt that it's Mayo.
There are great connections between the two counties but when McGinnity and his old friend, Martin Carney, sat in Brewster Park for a league match last February, neither could see their own county doing much.
"I was talking to Martin about it during the week. Funny how the dynamics of football change. Fermanagh tried three different free-takers in that game and we were missing frees from 20 yards. Martin says Mayo have about seven different players from that day. Fermanagh are the same.
"Tom Brewster was still away, Mark Little only came on as a sub and Eamon Maguire, well he was only a figment of people's imaginations at the time. It shows what can be done with a little effort, enthusiasm and self-belief."
Fermanagh people no longer have to imagine having players like Eamon Maguire or Mark Little. They are now firmly imprinted on the national psyche - just as Peter McGinnity, soon to be rid of his most unwanted soubriquet, once was.
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