Ulster Club football championship/Carrickmore 3-11 DerryGonnelly 0-5: Newly-crowned Fermanagh champions Derrygonnelly Harps found a week was too short a time to get themselves mentally right for this Ulster club preliminary-round meeting with the Tyrone champions at Brewster Park.
For the opening 10 minutes they give little indication of the second-half collapse to come, but the cracks began to appear in the 13th minute when Gabriel McCallan got the simplest of goals to help Carrickmore to a 1-5 to 0-3 half-time lead.
Five points adrift, the Harps had plenty of time to make up the gap in the second half, but their passing was woeful and when substitute Neville McGrath pointed in the 15th minute (1-10 to 0-5) it was their last score.
Shortly afterwards a free-for-all broke out and a player from each side got his marching orders, McCallan for the winners and the Harps' Paul Greene. This more or less ended the Harps' interest in the match.
Eight minutes from time a mistake by their defence allowed Conor McAleer to nip in and fist the ball home and, on the stroke of normal time, Peter Loughran capped an impressive display with a neatly-taken goal.
Carrickmore manager Dominic Corrigan was pleased with his team's performance but paid a generous tribute to the losers. He suggested it was expecting too much of them to reproduce the performance of the previous Sunday after such a short interval.
CARRICKMORE: P McCallan; P Daly, P Doyle, C McGurk; C Loughran, R McGarrity, K Gormley; D McElroy, C Gormley; C McAleer (1-2, one free), B Gormley (0-3), G McCallan (1-1), M Donnelly, P Loughran (1-5, three frees), M Gallagher. Subs: N Hurson for C Loughran; F MaGill for McElroy; F Gormley for Gallagher; D Loughran for McGurk.
DERRYGONNELLY: P Murphy; P McKenna, S Burns, F McKenna; N Gallagher, D Cassidy, A Gallagher; M Greene, G Greene; D Ward (0-1), P Greene (0-2, one free), J McGurn (0-1), P Ward, K Cassidy, K McGrath. Subs: C Glynn for K McGrath; N McGrath (0-1) for G Greene; T Greene for F McKenna; R Burns for P Ward.
Referee: J White (Donegal).
