Bolger bullish about divisional teams' continued participation in senior football championship

North Roscommon senior football manager, Peter Bolger, believes his side have made huge progress in 12 months, despite being knocked out of the senior football championship by St. Faithleach’s.

The Ballyleague-based side prevailed by 1-14 to 1-6 in Lisnamult, earning Faithleach’s a quarter-final berth against Clann na nGael on Saturday (tomorrow) evening.

Despite the logistics of putting a team together from clubs at the business end of their championship season, Bolger accentuated the positives, highlighting that the display represented a marked improvement on their 29-point loss to eventual All-Ireland runners-up St. Brigid’s last year.

“I see a huge progression. Just to give you a simple stat, we were beaten by 7-15 to 0-7 against Brigid’s. This year Faithleach’s kept Brigid’s to four points and we kept Fáithleach’s to eight points.

“That is a huge, huge turnaround. It mightn’t show it on the scoreboard, but, in reality, it means we have turned an awful lot of mileage around. We know that Faithleach’s could’ve scored another two or three goals, but we created a defensive system which was good enough. Some of the lads didn’t buy into it totally, and it’s going to take time to work on that,” he told the Roscommon Herald.

Bolger went on to point out that his team weren’t at full strength ahead of their preliminary quarter-final as a result of injuries and clubs not making their players available.

“We had nobody from Strokestown, we had nobody from St. Michael’s and we had only one from Kilmore. That’s not Kilmore’s fault, the lads from Kilmore are coming towards the end of their careers, and they’re trying to keep their own club up.

“What really hurt us was that we had 11 injuries — players we could have used. Young Liam Killoran broke his collarbone, Darragh O’Beirne did his knee, they would be two crucial players to us,” admitted Bolger.

However, the lack of some key players hasn’t dented Bolger’s enthusiasm, as he looked forward to the future.

“Next year, we have about 12 young players coming in from various clubs, which will be tremendous. We will always bring the youth into it because it is a young man’s game. Our committee is going to sit down and get a division for the north complete for as long as we can have it.”

The manager extended his gratitude to all those that sponsored the team since its inception — Cryan’s Hotel; Arigna Fuels; Glancy’s SuperValu; The Brandywell, Dromod and The Crossbar, Ballinameen. He also thanked his backroom staff, the strong crowd that attended the game on Tuesday evening, and Roscommon County Board for supporting the initiative.

Despite another loss, he feels that the divisional team, with a strong backroom team, has the support of the clubs and key individuals in the county. He also remembered Chris O’Dowd, former Northern Board Chairperson, who was fully behind the project.

“I think if we continue what we’re doing, guys will want to play for us. This is for one reason — that all junior and intermediate clubs can play senior football, and see how they can compare to the senior players in our county. I can guarantee you, it won’t fail in the north,” he concluded.