Heneghan can transform the Rossies’ attack

How often do we see teams get a comfortable victory in Division One of the National Football League? Sunday last in the Hyde was a rare occurrence in that respect.

Though it’s very early in the lifespan of Mark Dowd’s reign, a defeat would have been damaging from a confidence point of view. Too often in the past we have flirted with strong performances (like in Killarney in Round One), only to fail to back it up by allowing standards to drop in the next game.

Roscommon got the job done efficiently against Monaghan and came away with a myriad of positives. There were a couple of reminders, too, of what can happen when we’re not at full tilt, but, overall, it was a commanding victory.

Chief among the positives for me was the display of Darragh Heneghan. He’s the kind of player I’ve felt we’ve needed over the past couple of years. It was why I hoped we’d get Conor Hand on the pitch more. The direct running threat Heneghan gives transforms the shape of our attack. The thought of getting both Hand and Heneghan on the field together is an exciting prospect.

“You can’t coach height”. Years ago, as Mayo were competing for All-Ireland honours under John Maughan, they had a midfielder called Shane Fitzmaurice — a cousin of the Kerry centre-back (and future manager) Éamonn. I knew some of the Mayo lads reckoned that while Shane wasn’t the best footballer, he was so tall that he was a useful weapon for them on kickouts. Maughan used to tell them that “you can’t coach height!” 

Anyway, that wisdom comes back to me in analysing Heneghan or Hand, or their likes. You can’t coach speed!

Now there’s plenty of strength and conditioning guys out there who I know will disagree, but when it comes to players with real game-changing speed, they’re few and far between and consequently very precious.

With my coaching/manager hat on, I’d love to remind Heneghan to continue to keep things simple. His first couple of games have been excellent. Often, new players, after starting well, begin to think they need to take on more responsibility or add more to their game. If we can keep Heneghan doing exactly as he’s doing, and nothing more, he’ll be a big weapon for us this year.

He was Man of the Match in my book on Sunday. He worked his socks off and every time he got the opportunity, he put the pedal to the metal and took on his man. Every team need a couple of players who can always be relied upon to beat their man and thus stretch the opposition.

Any team can look like they have a strong defensive shape until they get burned in a man-to-man footrace. Too often, Enda Smith has been our only guy to do that on a regular basis. Adding more pace to our team makes us much harder to set up against and will afford more space for our top shooters like Diarmuid Murtagh and Daire Cregg.

Cregg wasn’t at his best on Sunday but still worked hard and contributed well again, especially with that two-point free in the second half. He had the honour of being marked by Ryan O’Toole. Gabriel Bannigan always deploys O’Toole to deal with the opposition’s most dangerous forward.

I thought Cregg had the beating of him but wasn’t quite as sharp as he was in Killarney. He can really bring his game on another notch if he keeps the ball moving more quickly. Too often he takes a play before realising the pass is the best option. He’d be better off doing more “give and go” moves.

Keith Doyle’s performance and indeed the whole midfield area was another positive. While Doyle had a wobbly start, I felt he grew into the game and was the best ball-winner on the field over the course of the 70 minutes.

BREAKING BALL

We did well on breaking ball too. Senan Lambe was good in this regard while having another very strong performance on the ball as well as defensively. Dylan Ruane got on a mountain of ball in the middle third and constantly looked to inject pace and make things happen.

Aaron Brady looked solid in goal, as did Caelim Keogh in front of him. Brady can take his fair share of praise for our kickout successes.

Another of the biggest positives was Patrick Gavin at corner-back. He looks really tidy there and, tellingly, is comfortable coming out the field with possession, giving us go-forward ball and setting up attacks.

Enda Smith did his usual Enda Smith-like things, hurting Monaghan regularly, as did Diarmuid Murtagh. Their score-taking was excellent, although both will feel like they left a couple of points behind them.

In terms of areas to improve on, I think the biggest thing is an overall consistency of performance. There were too many spells of the game on Sunday where we looked average. For instance, 1-6 in the first half wasn’t a great return. We clogged our attacks up in central areas far too often, i.e. we didn’t put enough width on our attacks to create the necessary space to score.

Generally, at Division One level, you get punished if your levels of focus and intensity drop off even a touch. The last few minutes before half time in Killarney last week were a good example of that. Monaghan, however, weren’t nearly as tough a proposition and by the looks of Sunday’s game it’s hard to see them staying up.

Their conditioning even looked below par, surprisingly. This was most evident in the final ten minutes when Roscommon found it very easy to play keep-ball and run the clock down. To be fair to Monaghan, it seems they have more than their fair share of injury problems at present and maybe we’ll see an upturn in their fortunes once some of their missing players return.

On Sunday, their injury list was compounded by the loss of Louis Kelly just after half time. I thought he was the best player on the pitch in the opening 35 minutes. Apart from banging in 1-1 with his first two attacks, he seemed to be constantly on the ball and making things happen for the Farney men. He played in such a way that it was hard to nail down exactly what position he was playing. Wherever he was, he was having a big impact on proceedings. It’s no coincidence that Roscommon effectively went and won the game in the ten minutes directly after he went off.

Two games in. Two points. A good performance in defeat down in Killarney. We’re well set now to attack the rest of this league. Five more exciting challenges lie ahead. For now, we’ll take that.