Heavyweight bout will be a hard sell to the Roscommon public

There’s nobody involved who would have chosen this county final pairing at the start of the year, and yet it would have been a sporting travesty if anyone else other than Pádraig Pearses and St. Brigid’s would have been left standing on the cusp of winter.

Could you imagine someone in Pádraig Pearses turning around at the end of their 2024 season and saying that for next year’s county final, their ideal opponent would be the team that they beat after extra-time — with their main attacking threat absent due to injury, and for St. Brigid’s to have transferred in another automatic county starter into the mix for good measure?

It’s no less off the wall to imagine that St. Brigid’s would want to take on the reigning champions at a time when the Woodmount-based side have been remade and reforged in the white heat of enthralling battles against Clann, Oran and Boyle — a process that seems to have engineered a reimagined red machine that ruthlessly mowed down St. Faithleach’s in their last outing.

For their part, the book-keepers within Roscommon GAA might well have preferred some sort of novelty in the final pairing rather than a meeting between the two sides that have shared five out of the last six Fahey Cup titles between them.

In terms of quality, this Sunday’s final will be up there with the best of finals that will take place anywhere in Ireland this autumn. But, in Roscommon, there is absolutely no link between the quality of the football and the size of the crowd that wants to be there to see it in person.

The domestic product here is impeccable, and yet the audiences remain very low when compared not just to Galway and Mayo, but to what should be similar counties like Cavan and Monaghan.

The flamboyant attacking flair of Boyle, Oran or St. Faithleach’s, the potential end of a two-decade drought in the county town, or even the romantic giant-killing dream of a fabled underdog like Michael Glaveys — any of these storylines would have been an easy sell to the general public, who have the option of either staying at home to watch the game on Clubber, or else tuning into TG4 and watching fiercely contested county finals from Kerry and Tipperary that will determine the “champion of champions” in both our codes.

Yet for sporting integrity, and for either of these two powerhouse clubs to claim that they are the undisputed lords of the Roscommon footballing landscape, they needed to knock down the other along the way to this 2025 title.

In the world of club GAA, where human and financial resources are central to the overall health of a club but not necessarily as determinative of on-field success as is the case in other sports, permanent oligopolies tend not to exist.

There is never a Rangers and Celtic in any county — no New Zealand and South Africa, not even a New York Yankees or Dallas Cowboys, where one brand will always be bigger than the rest, regardless of success on the field.

In club GAA, empires rise and fall, dynasties emerge and decay. Out of the top five clubs in the Galway SFC roll of honour, Corofin are the current champions but not one of the other four (Tuam Stars, St. Grellan’s, Dunmore MacHales and Father Griffins) have added to their combined haul of 67 titles since Tuam beat Corofin by 0-7 to 0-6 in 1994.

There’s no serious warning sign out there for either Pearses or St. Brigid’s to suggest that either club has anything other than a bright future ahead, but maintaining their current elite standards won’t be easily done in either Kiltoom or Woodmount.

Both clubs draw on a healthy pool of current and future county senior players, and both have franked their form with success outside of Roscommon. That’s a very high bar.

If they weren’t around at the same time, who’s to say that one or the other wouldn’t be in the midst of a period of real domination? Yet paradoxically, they are both stronger for having each other around, in the true sense of “that which doesn’t kill you makes you stronger”.

Suggesting to representatives of either camp in advance of this final that the two teams are real contenders for Connacht and perhaps even All-Ireland honours would be like going on Israeli national TV to suggest that Palestinians should be allowed human rights — the very idea would be shot down quickly, for fear of being heard by the wrong ears.

Yet it’s the simple truth of the matter that whichever team is good enough to win this game will de facto be playing at a high enough level to make them a force to be reckoned with for any opponent, including the Dr. Crokes, Ballybodens and Naomh Conaills of this world.

The other ingredient that will spice up this final very nicely is the fact that while for most of the younger players in particular, the county final is the county final — nothing else matters except the here and now.

But those with a grasp on their sporting history will know that there is more to it than that. When St. Brigid’s broke through with that precocious 2020 team, there were those — this writer included — who thought that as many as eight of the county titles in this decade would go their way. A loss on Sunday would make it two from six, and while that haul would be celebrated for generations in some smaller clubs, it wasn’t what they imagined in Kiltoom when they saw this wonderful group develop through the underage ranks.

In Pádraig Pearses, it’s still not that long ago that the club was the most notable example of “always the bridesmaid, never the bride” anywhere west of the Shannon — in club football, of course!

The memory of that long famine is too recent for the club to develop an excessively refined palate, and yet at some point, they’re going to have to go back-to-back, to prove that they can be at their best while wearing a target on their backs, instead of always needing to be the one delivering the ambush.

St. Brigid’s have won four-in-a-row, Clann doubled that, and that is the company that Pádraig Pearses keep.

We live in an era of clips and clickbait, when champion boxers turn down fights that would cement their legacy in favour of bouts with influencers and YouTube sensations. And that’s rational — why choose to put your reputation on the line when you can gain the same plaudits and take an easier route?

All Roscommon football supporters can feel very grateful this week that championship football doesn’t put that choice on the table, and that a heavyweight bout like this is set to take place.

Even if too few of those fans will show their appreciation by making their way to Dr. Hyde Park this Sunday.