Daly delivering big time for the Rossies

Sunday was surely a very satisfying day for this Roscommon team and management. It certainly was for the supporters.

There’s a whole host of reasons for positivity. Take your pick. My favourite is the way we responded when it looked like Donegal were in the driving seat with twenty minutes remaining.

The fightback was tremendous. All the signs, after Donegal had whittled the lead from 11 down to two points in jig-time, were pointing towards an away victory. But I felt Ronan Daly best epitomised our desire to keep fighting at that stage of the game.

It’s remarkable watching Ronan at centre-back this year. It leaves it impossible not to make comparisons with his brother Niall. Their playing styles are very similar. That has become much more obvious now that Ronan is taking up a central position.

He never does anything too flashy but has most of the important attributes to make a top number 6. His positional sense is excellent, he competes fiercely if there’s even a whiff of a turnover and he’s calm and safe in possession. He can pick his moments to drive forward too and did that a couple of times when we were under serious pressure on Sunday.

The progression of Senan Lambe continues. He was terrific again and the addition of a scoring threat to his game is very promising. He has shown great consistency throughout the league, which belies his tender years.

In most, if not all, games I’d have had him down as one of our best performers. He was in the running for Man of the Match here again, up until the last 15minutes or so anyway.

It was around that stage that the amount of high-quality plays being made by Enda Smith became impossible to ignore. Imagine coming to the Hyde last Sunday as a neutral. Remember, Donegal are the team closest to Kerry in terms of being the best in the country and have a host of super players to back that up. Yet, it was still Enda who stood head and shoulders above the rest.

The point in the second half where he slalomed past a few defenders with a pirouette before driving one over against a very tricky wind was sensational. Look at his whole performance objectively, as a neutral, and you’d have to come away thinking this guy is one of the very best in the country.

He was far from alone though. Great support came off the bench just as it was needed. How pleasing must that be for Mark Dowd? Each of his subs made a big impact.

I thought the positioning of Colm Neary at wing-forward worked well. I’d still probably play him at wing-back but he did a fine job where he was. Having two wing forwards who are naturally inclined to play a bit deeper gives us a better overall shape. If anything, Dylan Ruane has drifted a bit farther forward in recent games and I’d like to see him going back to impacting the ball more often in the middle third.

Neary’s ball-carrying will hurt a lot of teams this year. He has a good eye for breaking ball too. I’d love to see us line up with him and Conor Hand as wing-backs along with Senan Lambe and Ruane as wing-forwards.

The big thing for me coming into the game was that we needed to see a bounce back from the no-show against Dublin. There would have understandably been a few worries that maybe we had just peaked early on in the league and were now falling behind the rest.

Sunday, and Donegal, was the perfect test for that notion. They were moving quite well, although one mitigating factor is that conditions did make it very difficult for either team to get into full flow. We got the performance that we hoped to see, and going on and getting the win was just a very welcome bonus on top.

At times in the first half, I thought it looked like Donegal were able to get the run on us through the middle and I felt that would translate into goal chances in the second half when they had the wind and things opened up for them.

Credit to our defence though in this case as we rarely got overrun in the second half, which is a very positive sign in terms of the team’s athleticism. Donegal’s shooting was superb with the wind and that put them in a very strong position. One could argue that we could have squeezed op more on their kickers, but we can’t have it every way. If we squeezed out more, we’d have left ourselves very vulnerable to conceding goals.

In fact, that’s something in Donegal’s defensive set-up that surprised me. They tried to squeeze out on our kickers in the first half and, in doing so, left oceans of space in behind, which we exploited a few times. There was a stark contrast in the second half, where we didn’t squeeze with the same intensity and they punished us with superb long-range shooting.

GREAT POSITION

Last week I wrote that we were in a great position, with Division One survival firmly in our own hands. This week, we’re in an even better position.

Being safe with a game to spare puts Mark Dowd in a fantastic position. While he’ll be keeping the lads focussed on each game as it comes, he’ll now be having a more intense look at the likely championship duel with Mayo in six weeks’ time. He can treat any game between now and then almost as a challenge game in preparation for the main event.

Now, we’re clearly in no position to turn our noses up at getting to a league final or even winning one, but there has to be priorities. Having sewn up our place in Division One for 2027, the whole coaching set-up will now gear things towards ensuring we’re primed to hit top speed come the end of April.

Mayo are in the same boat and so it’s unlikely we’ll be able to read too much into this weekend’s game either way. If we can get a win though, I suspect it’ll take us to a league final.

I fancy Armagh to turn Kerry over in the BOX-IT Athletic grounds. Kerry hit a real high with their beating of Mayo at the weekend and while I know Jack O’Connor will want to continue his excellent record of winning leagues, the sheer desire Armagh will have to stay up tilts it in their favour.

Whatever way the cards fall, it’s a good time to be a Rossie supporter.