Carr left searching for answers as Down rue missed chance

HALF an hour after the final whistle and Ross Carr was still there under the main stand in Enniskillen, oblivious to the pouring rain and trying to explain just where it had all gone wrong.

RTÉ, BBC and UTV all wanted their pound of flesh, so too did radio and the written media. All were prodding with the same painful questions.

He didn’t have much time to collect his thoughts but he didn’t need it. Carr had no doubt about where this game had been won and lost.

“There was a 15-minute period in the second-half. I felt, at two points up, that we were comfortable. Had we been able to push on and get another point or two we might have went on to win the game.

“In the same period of time, not only did we not score, but we turned the ball over. Fermanagh got a wee bit of momentum and there only looked like being one winner towards the end of the game.”

The questions kept on coming. Theories were put forward about certain players not having enough football under their belts. Benny Coulter’s case was introduced as Exhibit A.

Troubled by a heel injury for the last month, Down’s best forward had done little training and was a shadow of himself yesterday but Carr stood by his decision to parachute the Mayobridge man into the action.

“He was always going to start. It was just a matter of whether he was sharp enough to last the pace. Yes, he was struggling and maybe he wasn’t at full tilt but once you have a fella who wants to play in the championship – and he is a massive player for us – you take those chances.

“Sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn’t. The defeat today didn’t rest on Benny being fit or unfit. It was a 15 minutes where we weren’t able to do anything constructive.”

And then that dreaded word was uttered. The ‘qualifiers’. Down have seven weeks to get their heads right for that and, whatever about his players, Carr himself didn’t sound all that enthusiastic about them.

Hardly surprising really given the manner in which Down were talked up before the game. They hadn’t set the world alight in the league but they enjoyed a far more productive spring than Fermanagh.

“That doesn’t really bother us,” said Malachy O’Rourke. “Last year we had a good run in the championship but we won nothing at the end of the day. This year we were disappointed in the league and we got relegated, which was not in our plans. So we came into the championship under a wee bit of a cloud but I know these fellows and there is great character there. We were determined to put on a big display and are delighted that is the way that it worked out.”

It didn’t look too good midway though the second-half when Down went two points up, which was a bigger lead than it sounded in a game like that, but O’Rourke could still see his men pulling through. Or so he says.

“To be honest, I could because in championship football you always expect that. That is always part of it. There are times when you are sitting watching the game when the momentum is gone to one team.

“The thing that is important is that the management and the players realise that is part of the game and that each team will have a purple patch. You keep your discipline and work your way through a period like that. I was always sure that the boys would rally back and that is how it turned out.”