Just keep things simple this weekend

This Sunday, supporters will march up towards the Hyde with a nervous eagerness to get a result, or else we’ll stroll up there in a relaxed manner, just hoping for a positive performance.

It will be one or the other, and that will be decided the night before.

With these closing two fixtures, against Donegal and Mayo, coming just a week apart and with the opening rounds of the Connacht U-20 and minor competitions sandwiched in between, it’s a mighty week of games for Rossies.

Still, the most important one is none of those, but the meeting of Dublin and Armagh this Saturday night It’s a tight one to call, but I’d give the nod to Armagh. If they win, it’ll be the nervous eagerness we’ll all be feeling the next day in the Hyde. In that case, we’ll be needing to get a result from either Donegal or Mayo to be sure of survival.

Dublin beating Armagh, on the other hand, would leave us sitting pretty and just looking forward to a good game of ball.

Leaving those “what ifs” aside, what are we looking for this Sunday? A bounce-back from the relative no-show against the Dubs is a must. Remember last year. We started the league at a blistering pace and had promotion all but sewn up after four games, only for our form to nosedive thereafter, and we never got our mojo back for the rest of the year.

I don’t expect that to be the case this year. I think the Dubs game was a perfect storm of us hitting our lowest point of the league just as they hit their highest. A strong performance on Sunday will confirm that theory.

In the grander scheme of things, we’re right where we’d want to be, with Division One survival a very strong possibility and fully in our own hands.

Sunday will offer an insightful examination of where we’re currently at. The form team in the country are coming to town. Are we ready to go toe to toe with them? Are we going to kick on from here or will our season stagnate? Will we be vibrant and energetic or slow and ponderous in possession?

I’m expecting a positive day at the office for Roscommon. Whether that takes us all the way to a win, I’m not sure, but it should be close.

I’d like to see us beginning to get more scores from our half-back line and midfield. I’m hoping Senan Lambe’s point the last day is a sign of more to come. Speaking of Lambe, I think we should experiment with moving him up to wing-forward. I think it would release him to get even more involved in the game and he could play a similar role to that of Dylan Ruane.

If we could get two lads flying in that role of linking defence to attack, it would really increase the speed of our transition play even more. Yes, he’s playing very well at wing-back, but that doesn’t mean he can’t offer even more in another position.

That brings me back to an old hobby-horse from last year — the campaign to get Conor Hand playing at wing-back. He’d give us an explosive attacking option from there, which opponents would find nearly impossible to deal with.

Another item on the wish list would be to see Colm Neary more involved in our attacking play. Playing corner-back shouldn’t curtail you from contributing in the other half of the field. Look at the way Dublin used Eoin Murchan again and again to punch holes in the Roscommon rearguard.

Hopefully, Conor Ryan will be fit to return to midfield. I wrote last week that his partnership with Keith Doyle is worth persevering with. We can get more out of it though. 

One incident in the first half of the Dublin game annoyed me and I’m hoping it’s an area we’re working on. Keith Doyle came right out to the sideline on the stand side for one kickout and it was Ciarán Kilkenny who went to mark him with no one else within 20 yards. That’s the kind of match-up we should be thrilled to get, but Keith never put his hands up to look for it, nor did Conor Carroll look to use him. Instead, we kicked long to the glut of bodies on the far side.

EMBRACING 'PIGGERY'

Kieran McGeeney calls those kickouts to a sea of bodies, “piggery”. He bemoans it. Others love it. We should embrace it.

That example from the Dublin game was frustrating because we had exactly the kind of scenario teams would love to have, our best fielder isolated one-on-one with an opponent he had the beating of. We should be doing our best to create these scenarios and then exploit them.

It’s like embracing the piggery on our terms. Get our best fielders into mismatches and kick the ball to them. It really is that simple.

I saw a short clip of Gareth Bale (Wales’ best-ever footballer) talking the other night about his time with Real Madrid and, in particular, the forward line of himself, Karim Benzema and Cristiano Ronaldo. That’s one of the greatest attacking trios we’ve seen in modern times.

Bale made the point that there was very little needed in terms of tactics. Himself and Ronaldo would attack high and wide while Benzema would drop a touch deeper to knit things together. Their manager, the great Carlo Ancelotti, didn’t overcomplicate things because he didn’t need to. Sometimes, in fact most of the time, it really is that simple.

It’s the same with modern day Gaelic football. We don’t need to overcomplicate things. This Sunday, for example, we need to see us moving the ball at speed and being fiercely competitive in every contest.

A case in point is the impact Darragh Heneghan made in the first few games of the league. There was no major tactical move. He was just able to take on defenders and beat them, and that transformed completely the look of our attacks.

Hopefully his injury won’t keep him sidelined for long. Conor Hand’s return to the set up at least offers a high-speed replacement.

All said, here’s my wish list for this Sunday (on top of the win, obviously): More scores from further back the field, more sights of Colm Neary driving forward, and smarter “piggery”.

The biggest wish of all? That Dublin do us a favour on Saturday night and so we can all breathe a bit easier and enjoy what should be a great battle in the Hyde.