We had the game won and we gave it away, admits McEneaney

Did Monaghan blow it, or were Down just too good in the second half? Eamonn McEneaney reckoned he knew the answer.

“The reality is that we had the game won and we gave it to them,” he said. “We dropped back and let them come on to us. We took pot-shots at times in the second half when we should have been doing what we were doing in the first half, laying the ball off to the shooter and let him put it over the bar.

“You get days like this but for Monaghan they are too frequent. Glorious defeats are no good.”

Down star Benny Coulter was in dreamland after.

“If you had told me with five minutes of the first half to go that we would be in an Ulster final, I’d have laughed,” grinned Coulter.

Just seven weeks after breaking his ankle, Coulter came on with five minutes to go in the Athletic Grounds and scored a crucial point with his first touch to complete a fairytale day.

“This is probably one of the best feelings I’ve ever had in my life. I’ve got to an All-Ireland final but this is just as good.”

It was unusual to see winning supporters waiting to boo the referee after the final whistle. Such was Down’s anger at Michael Duffy’s decisions in the second half, particularly the decision to allow Tommy Freeman’s goal, when they thought the play had stopped, and then Danny Hughes’ penalty appeal which was turned down. James McCartan tried to be diplomatic. “I thought there was more than one shout for a penalty, I felt a lot of big calls didn’t go our way.”

Trailing 0-11 to 1-2 at the break, McCartan asked his players at half-time to go out and play for pride. They ended up doing a lot more than that.

“I played in a lot of Down teams in late 90s that raised the white flag,” he explained. “I was disappointed the way the boys had played because I knew they were better than that. I didn’t want them to go through the feelings I had with those Down teams so I just asked them to put their bodies on the line.”