Fermanagh's pain 'hard to put into words' - Love

Ryan McEvoy's late goal left Fermanagh still seeking a first win in the Ulster Championship since 2018

Conor Love said it was "hard to put into words" Fermanagh's crushing disappointment after Down snatched a dramatic 2-19 to 0-23 Ulster SFC victory at Brewster Park.

Love's all-action display, which included scoring 0-5 and still earned him the man-of-the-match award, helped Fermanagh lead by seven points with seven minutes remaining only for Daniel Guinness and Ryan McEvoy goals to earn Down an unlikely win.

"Honestly, I can't even think about what happened there in the last 10 minutes," said a clearly devastated Love as Fermanagh remained without an Ulster Championship win since 2018.

"We can play the football. We're as good as any team. Honestly…….but there's no point thinking about it now."

The Enniskillen Gaels club-man admitted however that the squad are going to have to study their late collapse, painful viewing as it will undoubtedly be, adding that it was not the first time they have thrown away seemingly a winning lead.

"We're going to have to look at it again. To lose it like that, it's happened too much the last years."

The arrival of the new football rules - and in particular the two-point score - led to a series of comebacks during the Allianz Football League and Love said Fermanagh had inflicting something similar on Sligo when fighting back to draw the Division Three contest at Brewster Park on 1 March.

"That's the thing with the new game. We've been the other way with Sligo in the League when we were seven down.

"It's not like we weren't aware that that could happen. It happened but you're never ready for that."