Burke feels that new rules need tweaking

At this stage, Davy Burke and his players are getting a feel for the new rules.

The Roscommon manager has been keen to accentuate the positives, but he still thinks that tweaks need to be made.

Seeing Sam Mulroy, and Diarmuid Murtagh, being rewarded with two points with straightforward frees that they should be knocking over in their sleep was clearly on Burke’s mind as he reflected on the merits of a second successive league victory in Division Two.

“Being able to bring the ball out for a two-point free is just too harsh. I don’t buy that they’ll just foul for one then. No GAA team, for as long as I’m involved, ever goes out to foul. So the two-point free should go. The likes and Diarmuid Murtagh and Sam Mulroy don’t need to be getting two points for tapping the ball over the bar from 40 metres.”

But Burke wasn’t finished when it came to the rules.

“And this handing the ball back craic, what are we at? Just drop it on the ground. If you throw it away, then bring it up. But we’re all adults here,” he continued.

Burke also concurred with Donegal manager Jim McGuinness that more substitutes should be allowed during games, given the demands the new game places on players’ energy levels.

“We have James Fitzpatrick, Conor Hand, Ciarán Lennon. The Pearses lads and Robbie Dolan haven’t been involved this year yet. How do we get all these boys in?

“The boys on the field are blowing. Surely, we need more subs — six, seven or whatever it might be.

“I wouldn’t personally agree with rolling subs — it would just ruin the game. There would be no flow. It would be a mess. But definitely we need six or seven subs. When you’re in Croke Park on hard ground, that middle eight will be just savage stuff,” he felt.

Back to a hard-earned two-point victory against Louth on Sunday, and Burke felt that the benefits of coming through a tight game overweighed any perceived notion of Roscommon easing off in sight of the finishing line.

“It’s very hard to win away from home, so we’re delighted to come here and leave with two points.

“We dug it out. I’m glad we didn’t end up winning by seven or eight points because we’ll get far more out of that in terms of character-building. We’re happy with the depth of the squad. We came back into it strong and, once again, I felt that our subs made a difference.

“There’s no such thing as switching off in this game. When we’re running subs, we’re not emptying the bench anymore. We’re bringing lads on to have an impact.

“But just winning on the road is massive. Louth took Armagh to the 74th minute in the early rounds of the National League last year. Winning away builds huge confidence amongst a very young squad. We’ve no Dalys or Davy Murray on the field. Look at Pearse Frost, Colm Neary and Senan Lambe — now we’ve more defenders,” he highlighted.

Needless to say, a few performances really impressed the manager.

“Fair play to Diarmuid (Murtagh), I thought he was really good today. He stamped his class up top, and got the better of his match-up with (Donal) McKenny.

“I thought Keith (Doyle) was brilliant around the middle — a really big, strong dominant performance. He was excellent against a player who was nominated for an All-Star (Tommy Durnin).

Colm’s (Neary) a decent player alright. He played a different role today for us. He was marking last week, we let him play a bit of football this week.

“To be five up at half time was very important because we were five down last week. We spoke about that in the dressing room. But whether it’s a five or eight-point lead, we’re seeing that it doesn’t really matter in this game.

“Kickouts are massive now. We saw in the Donegal game last night (Saturday) that when you have the wind, you have to make hay — it’s as simple as that. I think we did well on both kickouts,” he concluded.

For Louth manager, Ger Brennan, he had no qualms with the result.

"Roscommon were full value for the win. To lose to a team that have been Division One for a long time by just two points showed the resilience of our lads. But it was a disjointed performance. Ultimately our fundamentals were poor," he felt.