They may be one of only two counties to have never claimed a provincial title alongside Wicklow in the football championship, and their pedigree may not be as strong as other counties, but as they showed on their route to the All Ireland quarterfinal stages last year, this Fermanagh side are only worried about writing their own history. The man on the sideline guiding them, Pete McGrath, has been there and done it all before, guiding his native Down to two senior and one minor All Ireland titles in the past. In his last meeting with a Mayo side he was in charge of a Down u21 team that saw off Mayo in an All Ireland semifinal in 2009 in Longford, there are plenty familiar Mayo faces from that team no part of this year's set up and they do not want to see McGrath smiling at full time again at the end of a championship encounter.
After last year's adventure that brought them to the last eight of the championship thanks to wins over Antrim, Roscommon, and Westmeath, they won the hearts of many neutrals with the way they just kept playing away in their own style against the odds when they faced Dublin, this year has not been as good as the Erne faithful would have hoped. They finished in fourth place in division two of the league with two wins, two draws, and two losses. They followed that up with a first round Ulster championship win over Antrim by six points, before they went down to Donegal at the Ulster quarterfinal stage by seven points on a score of 2-12 to 0-11. In round one of the qualifiers they had five to spare over Wexford to set up tomorrow's meeting with Mayo.
They have kicked 1-42 over their three games so far this year in the championship, but all bar 11 points have come from two players, with Tomas Corrigan kicking 0-25 for them and Sean Quigley 1-6 in those three games, so Mayo will have earmarked those two to shut down as option number one in defence for tomorrow. But it is not just Quigley and Corrigan that Mayo have to worry about. The likes of Eoin Donnelly in the middle of the park is a fine player along with Che Cullen in the number three shirt and James McMahon. Up front the half forward line work hard to provide the platform for Quigley and Corrigan to fire from, and Paul McCusker, Barry Murlrone, Ryan Jones, and Ruairi Corrigan will look to do a lot of the donkey work to feed their star duo.
Fermanagh have two leftovers still involved from the 2004 All Ireland semi-final meeting between the sides with Ryan McCluskey (currently injured, but still part of the squad ) and Damian Kelly and they will be looking for a bit of revenge 12 years on.
