A team that stick to their true values
WE DID IT: An emotional Roscommon senior football captain, Diarmuid Murtagh, reacts seconds after the final whistle as his side are confirmed as 2026 Connacht senior football champions in the most dramatic of circumstances against Galway at King and Moffatt Dr. Hyde Park on Sunday last. Picture: INPHO/James Crombie
Albert Camus was born in Algeria and died in France, neither a Gaelic football stronghold.
Long before he gained prominence and eminence as one of the world’s greatest philosophers, earning a Nobel Prize for Literature in 1957, he was also a promising teenage goalkeeper.
As a player he was praised most for his bravery and courage. But that career came to a premature end when he contracted tuberculosis at the age of 17.
His forced withdrawal from team sport he loved only cemented his profound respect for what it taught him, summed up in his famous quote: “Everything I know about morality and the obligations of men, I owe it to football”.
In the week leading up to Roscommon’s win over Mayo in Castlebar, Declan Bogue of the42.ie tried to explore the secret sauce that was enabling Roscommon to punch so far above its (bantam) weight, when measured in the context of population and resources.
Bogue’s piece was well-researched and nuanced, citing the dominance of football in the hearts and minds of the majority of the county, the strong club scene and the enthusiastic coaching culture. Still, there was no obvious conclusion that a county board chairperson from another Division Three or Four county could latch onto and make into a cornerstone of a rebuilding project. The sauce was still secret.
Then you see a game like the Connacht final, you listen to the post-match reaction, you place it in the context of everything that has happened with this senior football panel and in Roscommon GAA generally in 2026, and the jigsaw pieces start to fit together.
There was never a time in Roscommon GAA when the county was bereft of passion, pride, or devotion to the greater cause, but it’s hard to recall a time where the project as a whole, but particularly this senior football campaign, has so plainly been driven by people who understand the morality and obligations behind what they do.
The wider context is this. These are heady times for the sport of Gaelic football, but the sense that the sport is gradually, but undeniably moving away from ordinary people is still hard to ignore.
Whether it’s the growing number of games disappearing behind a paywall, the handful of top-level stars who are moving into a netherworld that is not professional but certainly not amateur, or the sanitised, media-trained and corporate-friendly “content” that leaks down to the ordinary fan through social and traditional media channels, things are not how they were.
Players are still, in the main, good and decent people who will happily step into a picture and sign an autograph for a young fan, but they’re a lot less likely to bump into you on a daily basis. Indeed, such has been the explosion in what is expected of intercounty players in terms of time and secrecy, conversations with players are now invariably friendly, but also brief and superficial, at least in season.
And when the tide is going a certain way, it takes hard rowing to go in any other direction.
Enter Mark Dowd and his selectors. At a time when counties like to talk about having a club ethos as a marketing tool, they live that spirit.
They entered into this commitment with their eyes wide open, understanding the sacrifice that was involved — not just for them, but for the others in their lives.
They understood that the privilege of leadership, the cost of leadership and the morality of leadership weren’t just pros and cons of taking on the task. they are three legs of the same stool — all three must be firm if any of them are to stay upright.
In countless ways, this group has taken the idea of obligations and morality, and turned them into strengths on the football pitch.
Look first at the swathe of retirements, the absence of Strokestown and St. Brigid’s players for long stretches, the shark-infested water that is Division One football. These were all ready-made excuses for a newly-installed management team but none of them were ever cited, because to do so would effectively say to the new recruits that you might be on the team now, but if everyone was available, you wouldn’t be. It would be a vote of no confidence, and so Dowd risked his own reputation instead by placing real faith in his team selections.
The enthusiasm of Roscommon people for their intercounty football teams is undeniable, but taking it for granted was never an option with this set-up.
The open day with supporters in Dr. Hyde Park during the league, the freedom players have to talk to the general public through the media, the generosity with their time on the field after games — all of this reinforces the connection between fans and the team.
Then on Sunday, Roscommon scored 3-21. Out of that, 0-2 was scored in the first quarter, and 1-1 in a 20-minute spell in the second half. Consequently, they needed their purple patches to be deep purple. The noise of the crowd was their smoke on the water, fire in the sky. The connection held firm when the players needed it.
Young and old, these players have grown to reflect the ethos of their management too. Faith has been shown in them, they keep faith in themselves — how else would you come back from six down with ten minutes to play, without scoring a goal?
Even within that comeback, there was no retreating into trying to mind the ball, or play for time, once they crept into the lead. They’re not wired that way.
After Diarmuid Murtagh kicked his two-point free, Roscommon led by one and they had a sideline ball. Particularly given the catastrophic way Derry managed their Ulster semi-final finale against Monaghan or the way Westmeath were blamed for kicking away possession against Kildare, lots of teams would have thrown the plan out the window and tried to hold the ball.
Instead, Enda Smith, Shane Cunnane and Conor Hand keep attacking, they set up Diarmuid Murtagh’s final point, and so Galway had to chase a two-pointer into the wind, which they don’t get.
Enda Smith caused Mayo endless torment in Castlebar, but on Sunday he was a water carrier, embracing that role. His catch to set up Keith Doyle’s first half point, his blockdown of a Galway handpass to set up a Darragh Heneghan score early in the second, most of all his tackle on a rampant John Maher after 48 minutes to save a certain point — these weren’t highlight reel moments but each one was a building block in a load-bearing wall.
It could be said that it’s easy to do all this when the team is winning games and playing with flair and fun, and to an extent that’s true. But we don’t have to go that far back through the years to think of situations where Roscommon weren’t going well, and the cracks of division showed in post-match interviews that involved a lot more “calling out” than “circling the wagons”.
There isn’t a Roscommon Herald reader who could visualise management pointing the finger at players, or vice versa, in this current regime, regardless of how results go.
Most of all, this is a group that understands how their performances and attitudes feed directly into the mood of the people of Roscommon.
This sports section is hardly the place to call out the ills of the world and our seemingly inexorable march towards fascist authoritarianism in a barren, post-capitalist wasteland, and for all our trust in Dowd, Murtagh and all the other leaders within this Roscommon football group, they can’t do a lot about that situation either.
They can’t save the world, but they can show us why it’s worth fighting for by training, playing and living in a way that reflects the best of what this county can be as a community. They can be honourable, decent, courageous and committed, and all of that can only thrive if it is supported and encouraged.
In Tipasa, Algeria, inside some Roman ruins, a monument was erected in honor of Albert Camus, bearing the phrase (in French), extracted from his work Noces à Tipasa: "I understand here what is called glory: the right to love beyond measure."
In Conor Carroll and Aaron Brady, Roscommon had two fine goalkeepers in his 26 last Sunday. But if Mark Dowd wanted to recruit another, and it was 100 years ago and we were in Algeria, our guess is that Albert Camus would have felt right at home in this Roscommon panel.
