By Shaun Casey

FERMANAGH sharpshooter Darragh McGurn believes the Erne County can take lots of learning from their 2-32 to 1-24 defeat to Armagh into the upcoming Tailteann Cup campaign.

Declan Bonner’s men, who suffered relegation to Division Four in the league, were 16-points adrift at half time but came out swinging in the second half to make the scoreline a little more respectable.

McGurn led the charge up front, kicking 1-11 after the turnaround, 1-12 in total, sailing over four two-pointers and smashing home an awesome goal as well.

“I’d still be very disappointed with a lot of the stuff that went on in the second half in terms of how we defended a lot of situations. They created a lot of easy one-point opportunities,” said the man of the match.

“I’d say there wasn’t actually that big of a difference in terms of score-for-score in that second half, just more so that we kicked a lot of twos. There’s still a lot of learnings from playing top opposition, to defend better I think.

“It shows you on a day like that, it was a day for kicking long-range scores and you get your rewards when you back yourself in those scenarios and Armagh did that in the first half, I think they had four two-pointers, we probably weren’t expecting them to go for as many.

“We probably defended too deep in that first half and that’s learnings that we can take into the Tailteann Cup as well.”

Had Fermanagh put in a better performance in front of the posts in the first half, they would have been well in the game but McGurn and co were left to rue a mountain of missed opportunities.

Fermanagh had 18 shots in the first 35 minutes, just three shy of their opponents, but only registered 0-4, kicking nine wides and a series of shorts as well.

“It’s a killer,” McGurn added. “We identified coming into the game that Armagh thrive on counterattacks, so a big focus was not dropping balls short and not getting turnover in that area of the pitch and it happened and it killed us.

“It’s very, very hard to stop that quality of opposition and that speed when you drop the ball short. One, the energy is zap out of you and two, you have an all-out sprint to the other end of the field and the ball’s probably over the bar.

“We talk a lot about dropping balls short but you still have to go for the shot and sometimes you just miss execute it.”