Late Dublin surge puts Rossies to the sword
Dublin's Cormac Costello gathers possession ahead of Roscommon's Robbie Dolan during this evening's All-Ireland SFC Group 2 game in Croke Park. Picture: INPHO/Ken Sutton
It wasn’t the fairytale evening that optimists would have hoped for, and it wasn’t the demolition job that pessimists feared. The scoreline might suggest that Dublin brushed Roscommon aside in Croke Park this evening, but 2-2 from the Dubs from the 66th minute onwards put a considerable element of gloss on the score at the end of a game where Roscommon were competitive, even if they were still clearly second best.
In a lifeless atmosphere, Roscommon conceded the first three points, but then were never more than three behind until Con O’Callaghan fisted a point in the 59th minute.
They stayed in touch largely on the back of excellent shooting from the inside line trio of Daire Cregg, Diarmuid Murtagh and Conor Cox, all of whom were in superb form with the boot, hitting the target with 13 of their 14 attempts on goal between them.
Dublin were the better team in most areas of the field, but Jack McCaffrey’s introduction certainly helped as he picked up a couple of important breaking balls off kickouts, Seán Bugler came off the bench to kick two excellent late scores, and for good measure Colm Basquel was eager to make an impression and he did exactly that with a goal that broke Roscommon’s resistance.
There were five minutes remaining when Con O’Callaghan got out in front to field a perfectly delivered low ball and lay it off to his Ballyboden colleague. A quick exchange of passes with Brian Fenton, who was doing his usual thing of dominating final quarters after wearing down his opponents up to that, left Basquel with just Conor Carroll to beat.
A low finish into the left corner did that, and with the last traces of risk eliminated, Dublin eased home with another 1-2 for emphasis, including 1-1 from O’Callaghan.
A 12-point margin felt a little unfair on Roscommon, who defended diligently – conceding just two scorable frees all game – and managed the game quite well, within the context of being clearly second best in a lot of sectors of the field.
Three points from Fenton, Ross McGarry and Paul Mannion in the first five minutes probably confirmed the All-Ireland champions’ suspicion that this was going to be a relatively straightforward contest, and from there, Roscommon were happy to settle into a tit-for-tat scoring contest, never trailing by more than three, but never running the risk of waking Dublin up and drawing level either.
Davy Burke’s side responded brilliantly to Eoin McCormack’s black card in the 30th minute, firing over the last two points of the first half. Likewise after the break they made the most of very little good attacking possession, and Diarmuid Murtagh’s point in the 49th minute to make it 0-13 to 0-12 – where he recovered very well after slipping in possession – was typical of their remarkable husbandry.
A needless foul by Daire Cregg to allow Cormac Costello his first pointed free of the game didn’t fit into that plan however, and the introduction of Bugler in particular left them with one too many holes to plug in the closing minutes.
