Division Two

Fermanagh v Laois

Saturday, Brewster Park, 2pm

By Niall Gartland

FERMANAGH player Kane Connor says he feels let down by the GAA after their Covid-hit team were relegated by Clare at the weekend.

The Erne County’s request for a postponement was turned down by Croke Park even though 10 members of their team had tested positive for Covid-19 in the lead up to the game.

Their depleted outfit put up a brave performance on the day but lost out by 1-11 to 1-9 and were duly relegated as a result, so their final group stage clash against Laois this Saturday is effectively meaningless.

Connor was one of the lucky ones who escaped the virus and lined out against Clare, and while he doesn’t want to be too critical of the organsation, admits that the whole saga hasn’t sat well with him.

“Of course you don’t want to see this happen other counties, but if it had’ve been Dublin or Donegal then there might’ve been a different outcome.

“We feel very unlucky and let down. We were heading into our most important game of the season and we couldn’t prepare right for it at all, we only had three or four training sessions..

“We don’t want to take a pop at the GAA, they’re an easy target at the minute, and we loved being back at it, but we still feel let down and annoyed.

“They didn’t really take our health and wellbeing into consideration, or our partners and families’ well-being either.”

Connor says there’s a widespread perception that Fermanagh are something of a soft touch. Over the course of 2007 to 2018, they received the lowest level of coaching money in the country from Croke Park, so it isn’t as if they feel aggrieved over nothing.

Kane hopes that having a bit of a siege mentality may do them no harm as they look ahead to their Ulster Championship tie against Down in two-and-a-half weeks’ time.

“It’s unfortunate but we’ve got this reputation as being walkovers and it’s not something that we as players want. It doesn’t help when Croke Park doesn’t weigh in behind us like they would for certain other counties. It is what it is and we can’t do anything about it.”

“We obviously think we can win the Down match. Maybe counties forget we were in an Ulster final two years ago, we didn’t do ourselves justice but we have a really good squad and there’s young players coming through.

“We just have to get a couple of good results and maybe people will start having more faith in it. I guess we’re usually underdogs, maybe it suits us and allows us to play with a bit of freedom. Realistically that’s the way it’ll probably be for the foreseeable future.”

Connor also said that not all the players who tested positive for Covid-19 were symptomatic, but unfortunately some were, like Aidan Breen who discussed the matter in an interview last week with Declan Bogue.

“I didn’t get chatting to them all individually. I read Breeno’s interview and he suffered from it big time, it was a bad flu and he had no energy. It can take a long time to recover from even when periods of self-isolation are over. He’d have been a nailed on starter for us any other time but he was too fatigued. Every boy was different, some had symptoms and others didn’t.

“We’d only 25 with us down at the weekend. We’ve looked back at the game and we definitely had opportunities to win with what we had, so it’s sickening to know what we could’ve achieved with another week or two’s preparation. It’s done now and I’m not going to sit here and chastise the GAA, I just thought we deserve better.”