Both teams must figure out how to land knockout blow

As Paul Carey stood over that free to potentially win Sunday’s county final, the audience could have been divided into three distinct groups.

There were Pearses supporters, giddy with excitement at the prospect of winning their fourth county final in seven seasons. There were St. Brigid’s supporters, sick with nerves at the thought that Brian Stack’s heroic equaliser might be in vain.

Finally, there were the neutrals, who in many cases were simply thinking, “not like this”.

That feeling wasn’t the result of any preference for one club to beat the other, just a natural dislike of ambiguity, or of a refereeing call splitting the teams.

Had David Murray or Hubert Darcy put the ball over the bar with their injury-time chance and Pearses held on as a result, that would have been a perfectly acceptable ending to a final of remarkable drama and unprecedented quality.

But for a game like this to be potentially decided by a free kick — correctly-awarded yes, but one where the crime and punishment felt mismatched — was another matter.

For several years now, the standard of football across the board in the Roscommon senior championship has been high. Mayo has a wide array of potential winners and fierce competitiveness, the winning Galway club will invariably be leading contenders for Connacht honours, but only Roscommon ticks both boxes.

Yet, even measured by that lofty standard, what St. Brigid’s and Pádraig Pearses produced in Dr. Hyde Park was a game where the pressure and rivalry only served to bring out the very best in two extremely talented panels.

Or to put it another way, it was as good a county senior final as there has ever been.

In the first quarter, St. Brigid’s were slick and ruthless. In the second, Pearses showed incredible grit and resolve, kickstarted by Conor Ryan kicking a free into the wind that was impeccable.

Then there was the finish, which was heart-stopping, with Seán Canning and Jack Tumulty cutting the holes to set up Adam McGreal’s goal. Ronan Daly hoisted over the lead score from halfway between Conor Carroll’s goal and Casey’s Service Station, before Shane Cunnane and Brian Stack combined to produce a sublime pass and finish under the greatest of pressure.

Then, there was the last play. The awarding of the free, and the decision to bring the ball forward 50 metres was probably the correct call on both counts by the letter of the law. Seán Trundle did handle the ball on the ground as he tried to make progress and he did hold onto the ball rather than release it for Pearses to attack quickly.

However, there was an innate sense of natural justice that felt like a match-winning free in that situation was too much of a sanction. The duality of mankind allows us to simultaneously hold conflicting emotions, and while the new rules have been a blessing for Gaelic football, it wasn’t moments like that which brought about the need for reconstructive surgery to the sport in the first place.

Trundle’s actions were technically fouls, but a long way short of truly cynical.

Now, if the name of the game is identifying the best club football team in Roscommon, then having another hour of action to look forward to — one in which the two sides can not alone demonstrate their talent but also show their footballing nous and their ability to make adjustments — feels like the proper way to answer that fundamental question.

For a true sense of satisfaction, a heavyweight contest of this nature deserves a knockout punch, not a split decision where the referee docked points for persistent holding.

So to the real question — who’s ready to land that killer blow on Saturday? With no clear weakness in either team, that will be decided by which side can clean up more of their small glitches in six days.

For Pádraig Pearses, the obvious room for improvement and adjustment is their management of the St. Brigid’s kickout. Conor Carroll’s recruitment was a huge boost for St. Brigid’s but on Sunday he was on another level, sending laser-guided restarts to his colleagues that, in many cases, put the team into the scoring zone with one flash of his boot.

The obvious fix is a simple one — conceding the short kickout at times and asking St. Brigid’s to work the ball through 100 metres of congested ground might ask more of their opponents and deny them that front-foot, first-phase ball.

Similarly, some match-up changes on that phase of the game could stand to the Woodmount men. It’s hardly coincidental that against both Clann na nGael and Pádraig Pearses, when St. Brigid’s need was greatest, Brian Stack was usually the target. Pushing someone like Ronan Daly up to marshal that threat after a big Pearses score could at least make that a bit tougher for St. Brigid’s to execute their go-to manoeuvre when they’re feeling the squeeze.

When the numbers are crunched, there might also be some concern in the Pádraig Pearses war room about how few shooting chances fell to players like Paul Carey and Hubert Darcy in the second half.

Darcy was absolutely central to Pearses stopping the bleeding in the second quarter but for him to end up without a meaningful shot on goal while other players with very different skill sets ended up taking on shots — and racking up wides — needs to be examined.

For St. Brigid’s, a lot more of the improvement needed will have to come on an individual level since, tactically, they got even less wrong.

The return of Senan Kilbride offers all sorts of interesting possibilities to a group where a lot of the forwards bring similar skill sets to the table. There certainly are balance concerns in a group where at least four of the starting sextet up front would probably be at their most effective in a corner-forward role. But could Kilbride feasibly contribute for more than ten or 15 minutes? That’s a big ask on a man who has missed so much football.

Nonetheless, something has to change up front. Without doing a whole lot wrong, Ben O’Carroll didn’t get those trademark shots away from 30 metres out, Conor Hand didn’t have his usual number of tackle-breaking runs, and a stat line that says that six players that lined out at midfield and half-back scored from play while only two of the forwards did the same, is a little bit of a red flag.

In terms of conditioning and fitness, St. Brigid’s first XV clearly have an edge over anyone else. They’re leaning on their bench quite lightly, invariably calling on the same experienced players who tend to be capable like-for-like switches rather than game changers, and yet they still finish games strong.

In fact both teams have now gone four consecutive games without getting a score off the bench and while subs can contribute in many ways other than scoring — just ask anyone who has seen Niall Daly in action this year — the side that best figures out how to find that impact from the sideline will go a long way towards winning on Saturday.

Of all the aforementioned issues however, St. Brigid’s getting back into a better scoring rhythm up front and finding more ways to bring Ben O’Carroll and Conor Hand into the game seems like the easiest thing to remedy in what is a very short turnaround time.

That alone makes them the narrow favourites going into what should be another “can’t miss” fixture.

Verdict: St. Brigid’s