ALL AROUND Clones, there were gasps of relief and hasty plans made for next week. The Creighton Hotel best keep its bar stocked. Judging by the quality and excitement of this Ulster final, there will be a bumper crowd back in Clones next weekend.

Depending on your loyalty, this was a day of what might have been and what almost wasn't. Should Fermanagh have won it or did Armagh nearly blow it? On the field, the teams went through their warm-down routines and then traipsed off the field. It is hard to imagine anything other than rest and recovery between now and the replay.

Aidan O'Rourke has seen days like this before. The Dromintee man is perhaps the great survivor of the gang of lads who came of age for Armagh this decade but yesterday, he could not conceal his impatience and annoyance at the way his team had lost their hold on this game. With 39 minutes gone, a brilliant Steven McDonnell point gave Armagh an eight-point lead. It all looked so familiar, redolent of the years when Armagh had rolled over the brightest hopes of trembling opposition. And yet by the end, they were lucky not to have lost.

"Can't explain it," O'Rourke said grimly. "Fellas were thinking about All-Ireland quarter-finals.

"I don't know if I would agree with that. From my point of view, I thought we were too slow moving the ball when we were being effective. It wasn't how we were trying to do it. It was maybe as a result of them turning the ball over.

"Okay, we played well enough to get that far in front. But there is no excuse for how we played with 20 minutes to go. There is just no excuse for it. And that happened against Cavan, it happened against Down and it happened in half our league games. I don't know. We have to sort it out. We have a week now and we have to sort it out."

The Fermanagh mood was predictably more upbeat. The novice team grew in stature and confidence as this final went on. After Ronan Clarke's goal, they had no choice but to relax and just play the game that has seen them knocking down more feted and illustrious teams in recent years.

"We will turn up for it anyhow," manager Malachy O'Rourke grinned when asked about the replay.

"With time ticking away, it looked like we mightn't get the final point there. But Seán Doherty kicked it over very confidently and I suppose that is why we put him on. We are confident he can do those type of things. There is not point in clapping ourselves in the back. Ourselves and Armagh are in the same boat again and whichever team applies themselves better next week will win it."

Before the match, O'Rourke had shared a cordial moment on the sideline with his old college friend Peter McDonnell. The Armagh manager admitted he was as happy as O'Rourke just to have a shot at landing this year's big prize in Ulster.

"I am delighted that we are still in the Ulster final. You do get games where you think you are going to get something and it is wrenched away from you. We have work to do and we have to start from scratch and go at this again. This is the challenge all along, to keep going minute by minute. The last match, we got a goal and went to sleep. It took us until we got a second goal this time before we went to sleep. At half-time, I was informed that Martin O'Rourke could last for about five minutes more. The legs were starting to flag and we made a substitution with the best intention of the game in mind because we were in the ascendancy and we wanted to drive the game home. There was no way that we could have legislated for what would happen in the last 20 minutes."

"Fellas were thinking about All-Ireland quarter-finals. I don't know if I would agree with that