Farney to face Tyrone in Final

Ulster Senior Football Championship Semi Final:
Monaghan 0-21  Fermanagh 2-08

Monaghan are into their first Ulster GAA Football Senior Championship final in three years after they recorded a comfortable 0-21 to 2-8 victory over Fermanagh at Kingspan Breffni Park on Sunday afternoon.

The Farney Men were always too strong for their opponents, who had not lost to Monaghan in the championship since 1968, and a strong first-half performance laid the foundations for this win.

Playing with the strong breeze, Monaghan, who kept regular full-back Darren Hughes in the goalkeeping role he filled in the win over Armagh, needed to make an impression in the opening period and they did that, using the elements to good effect to open up an 0-8 to 0-3 lead inside 24 minutes, with Paul Finlay shining for them.

For the nine minutes before the break, they would outscore Fermanagh by 0-6 to nil, with Finlay, Thomas Freeman, Eoin Lennon, Dick Clerkin and Stephen Gollogly all on target and they turned around with a commanding 11-point interval lead.

Fermanagh were struggling to find any kind of a rhythm, but early points from sub Seamus Quigley and a 45 from Rory Gallagher did cut the gap in the opening stages of the second half, and in a weekend of comebacks, another looked to be a possibility.

Monaghan did not let up their intensity however, and Finlay, McManus, Freeman and Hugh McElroy all pointed in the opening 10 minutes of the half to put 13 points between the sides and more or less decide the outcome.

Fermanagh never gave up, to their credit, and a tally of 1-1 from Gallagher in the last 10 minutes made the scoreboard look a little less lopsided, and Daryl Keenan also found the net for the men in green in the dying moments.

The late rally was never going to be enough for them to overhaul Monaghan however, and the victors now progress to meat Tyrone in the provincial decider, as they did in 2007.