More than a few eyebrows were raised when Sinn Féin announced its candidate for Fermanagh South Tyrone.
At each Westminster election nationalist and unionist voters coalesce around two main candidates, each hoping to back the winner.
Since 2001 the Westminster seat had been fought and won five times by high profile Sinn Fein stalwart Michelle Gildernew.
She'd only lost it once.
On one famous occasion, she held it by just four votes.
In 2019 she took the seat back from unionism by a margin of 57 votes out of the 50,000 cast.
So the decision to move her to make way for Pat Cullen looked like a gamble.
It was a big ask for a first time candidate to deliver the nationalist vote in such a marginal constituency.
But she has repaid her party’s confidence in her.
Pat Cullen was high profile in her own way, a leading trade unionist who led the UK’s nurses in industrial action over pay.
The fact that there is a major NHS hospital in Enniskillen with thousands of jobs depending on it, will not have done her any harm.
Boundary changes appeared to have played an important part in her victory. Prior to the poll it was being suggested there could be an extra couple of thousand nationalist votes in the constituency.
On the basis of this result, the most marginal constituency in the United Kingdom is marginal no more.
A 4,000 plus majority in such a hotly contested seat will make it a difficult one to win back for unionism.
The result was central to Sinn Féin’s drive to become the largest party from Northern Ireland at Westminster.
Expect to hear it use its new position as the biggest political grouping on councils, at Stormont and now in the House of Commons, as leverage for a border poll.
