Management and players must change mood music soon

Despite a return to top flight league football, there’s a sense that Roscommon’s season has yet to take off. It’s time for the management and players to get everyone back on their side, writes IAN COONEY…

For a team that were promoted back to Division One, the mood music surrounding the Roscommon senior footballers has been very sombre this season.

Sure, everyone had a great time in London. It was a social occasion to remember, and a comfortable victory against the home side allowed players and supporters alike to mix in the Ruislip sunshine afterwards. The company was convivial and, consequently, there wasn’t a sour word to be heard.

For those few days at least, it was an escape from the negativity that has engulfed the players and management over the past couple of months.

Promotion wasn’t achieved with the swagger of previous campaigns. It was a case of limping over the line as opposed to crashing through the barrier.

Had Dara McVeety’s two-point attempt found the target during those dying seconds against Cork, allowing Cavan to leapfrog Roscommon in the Division Two table, the Roscommon inquest would have been excruciating.

Manager Davy Burke has been the primary target for much of the criticism. His comments after the defeat against Cavan that Roscommon had no business being in a league final went down like a lead balloon.

Burke is a young manager still learning his trade. After matches, there’s no filter — he shoots from the hip and it often rubs people up the wrong way.

But at the kernel of his assessments is often a grain of truth that people with primrose and blue-tinted glasses simply don’t want to hear — that we’re not as good as we think we are.

Granted his assertion that Roscommon “came and brought it today” against Galway during the recent Connacht semi-final was pushing it, the idea that Roscommon are a plucky underdog that takes Mayo or Galway off their perch the odd time shows no sign of losing its relevance in today’s GAA pecking order.

Roscommon haven’t won a championship game in Croke Park since 1980. They haven’t beaten Galway in a Connacht championship game in the Hyde since 1990. It’s 2001 since the Rossies, on their home patch, wiped the smirk of Mayo faces during a provincial championship game.

And yet there were national pundits at the start of the year tipping Roscommon as potential dark horses for All-Ireland honours.

Burke’s reign is mirroring the same trend as his predecessors. Under Kevin McStay (when in sole charge of the team) and Anthony Cunningham, Roscommon won Connacht titles during their first year at the helm. Yet, a couple of years later, the pervading feeling among players was one of needing to change direction.

In Burke's case, there was an excellent Division One League campaign, which was followed by a famous ambush in Castlebar and a draw against the Dubs in Croke Park before the season petered out.

There’s no sense that Davy Burke has lost the dressing room, but unless Roscommon can turn things around over the coming weeks, the Kildare native’s era will, most likely, come to a natural conclusion.

In that context, heading to Killarney to take on Kerry is the last game you would plump for in terms of trying to get Roscommon’s season back on track. But it’s what happens in the two games after that which will define Roscommon’s season. In other words, Group B should provide clarity to much uncertainty.

Meeting the losing Leinster finalist at home and Cork — two Division Two teams — are games that Roscommon should be winning. One is linked to the other in that a win against Meath, who will only have a week’s turnaround from their opening game against Cork in the All-Ireland Series, will generate the momentum to finish the job against the Rebels.

That’s a realistic target, and one Roscommon can aspire to irrespective of what has happened up to now.

But there are no guarantees. Losing to Clare in 2022 was a disaster. Roscommon should have beaten Kildare and Cork in 2023, and that didn’t happen. Not laying a glove on Mayo three times last year sucked, and a loss against Cavan in the Hyde alongside a draw against an already-relegated Westmeath side in this year’s league was in keeping with a team that lack consistency — in terms of performance and selection as evidenced by seven changes made to the side from the starting 15 that lined out against Galway.

All is not lost, but the feel-good factor surrounding this team needs to return soon. A June Bank Holiday weekend in the Hyde would be as good a place as any to start.

Or maybe, under the shadow of the MacGillycuddy Reeks at 2.30 p.m. on Saturday, the building blocks will be put in place. A competitive performance that lasts 70 minutes alongside not suffering too much damage against a star-studded Kerry attack would be acceptable.

For that to happen, the idea that Kerry don’t see Roscommon as a threat to their Sam Maguire ambitions might just result in the Kingdom being content to just keep their opponents at arm’s length as opposed to going to town on them.

That way, everyone will go home relatively satisfied. Whether it would be enough to signal a shift in the current expectations surrounding this team remains to be seen.