Fermanagh manager CJ McGourty said he was “very happy” with his side’s performance as they picked up their second win in Group A of the All-Ireland Junior Championship.

The travelling side led by 12 points at half-time on a sunny afternoon in Carlow as they made the six-hour round trip worth it.

“We went down with a gameplan, we went down to get amongst them early,” McGourty said.

“We knew they were high on confidence, it’s alright coming up with a gameplan as the management team but in fairness, the players executed the gameplan to a tee.

"Definitely in the first 40 minutes, and obviously with the heat, we tired, and fatigue hindered decision-making. We’ve a bit of work to do yet in fairness, definitely the last 20 minutes, weren’t as good as the first 40 but the first 40 was the best football we’ve played all year.

"Some of our plans and ideas that we’ve been trying to get through over the last couple of months, there's signs that they are starting to show during games.”

Carlow scored a goal and point late into added time but it wasn’t enough to give Fermanagh quite as big a scare as Sligo did the week before, after the Zebras hit 1-03 in the final four minutes in Donagh to close difference to a point.

“A lot of teams in this championship have the quality to come back into any game," he continued. 

"We spoke about, very briefly at half-time, just keep doing what you're doing as best you can, obviously, they’re going to come out and have a purple patch. Every team gets their purple patch at some stage.

"We were four or five (points) up against them in the league at one stage and they came back, so, we mentioned that. We mentioned the Sligo game.

"Teams coming back into the game late on, we need to try and cut that out, stop it from happening. The message was to ‘keep doing what you are doing and keep the foot on the accelerator.’

"I would have liked to have scored a wee bit more, we had opportunities in the second half, but the shots were right, we weren’t taking them from mad angles. We just didn’t execute the simple scores that we did in the first-half.”

Fermanagh put a screeching halt to Carlow’s championship run. They were handed a first loss after wins over Sligo, London and Derry.

“We knew they would be very, very high in confidence,” McGourty added. “They’re coming off a league campaign here they have got promoted for the first time.

"I’m sure there’s a lot of talk about them and they’ve won their first three championship games, beating a very good Sligo team. They’re a good outfit, I think we just caught them on the hop yesterday.

"Three weeks in a row may have impacted them with injuries or fatigue on their behalf so it's hard to read but look it’s just one of them things. We clicked in the first-half.”

Despite Carlow ending Fermanagh’s hopes of promotion to Division Three this year, McGourty insisted his side weren’t focused on retribution: “We weren’t going down on a revenge mission.

"We made that clear to the players because sometimes you can get too overhyped and worried about the game. We just said to them ‘it’ 's a four-game process. This is game number two, it happens to be Carlow.’

"It (motivation) has to come within the players and whatever way they carried their hurt, from the league semi-final, it worked perfectly for us.

"We told the players we need to have more hunger and desire than Carlow and they showed that in abundance with their work rate.”

Fermanagh will face Derry this Wednesday, June 26 in a rearranged fixture at Brewster Park as they look to make it three wins from three.

“Football’s a strange game,” the Erne boss continued. “We beat Carlow yesterday by six points, Carlow beat us earlier this year in the league, we beat Derry handy enough in the Ulster final and Derry then only lost by a point to Carlow, so, you just don’t know.

"There will be no thinking, going into the game, that we are going to win this comfortably. If Derry beat us, they go above us in the group, we’re qualified for absolutely nothing yet.

"We’re looking for more of the same, in terms of performance and shooting accuracy in the first-half. We are also looking to try and improve a bit.”