Roscommon ladies set for battle with Leitrim 

Roscommon intermediate ladies’ football manager, Ollie Lennon, feels that his side must limit Leitrim’s goalscoring ability when the sides renew their rivalry in the quarter-final of the TG4 All-Ireland LGFA intermediate championship in Ballinamore this afternoon, Sunday at 2 p.m..

The sides met in the Connacht final in mid-May when goals by Ailbhe Clancy, Michelle Guckian and Muireann Devaney gave Jonny Garrity’s side a deserved 3-12 to 0-19 success in Kiltoom. Since then, Leitrim’s championship journey has taken flight with two further victories against Tyrone and Wicklow to top their group, leaving Lennon and his players in no doubt about the challenge facing them next weekend.

“When you come to knockout football, it’s always good to play a team that you know you can compete with. If you can compete with a team, you have a chance of beating them. That’s the way I would weigh up our prospects.

“We’ve been on the wrong side of results against Leitrim over the last couple of years, but there hasn’t been much between the teams. While they are a bogey team for Roscommon, we know that we can compete with them. When that’s the case, you know that there’s a performance in the team and that they’re capable of getting a result. But we have to get that performance, first and foremost,” he outlined.

“The obvious thing for us is that we’ll be looking at the goals we conceded in the Connacht final. Certainly, we’ll have to try and make things more difficult for Leitrim. They ran at us that day and we weren’t able to put up much resistance.

“They scored four goals against Tyrone, so we know they’re a team that can score goals. We’re very wary of that, so we have to try and keep those opportunities to a minimum,” he conceded.

That 4-12 to 5-8 triumph against a Tyrone team that will compete in Division One in 2025 certainly caught the eye. Leitrim, who weren’t promoted from Division Four after losing out to a last-gasp goal in their league semi-final against Limerick in Woodmount, were 2-2 to 0-0 behind after six minutes, but they defied the odds to make a mockery of the league standings between the sides.

“To beat a team like Tyrone was huge for Leitrim. In a lot of people’s minds, it was unexpected considering that Tyrone are now a Division One team and Leitrim are still in Division Four. That doesn’t matter when it comes to championship, but it was huge for Leitrim, considering they were nine or ten points down in that game.

“Then they went down to Wicklow and took care of them to put themselves in pole position. Since the Connacht final, they’ve definitely kicked on, and taking Tyrone’s scalp has been a massive part of that,” agreed Lennon.

However, the signs are that Roscommon are beginning to rediscover the form that saw them reach the Division Three League final against Clare. An unlucky loss against Wexford in Enniscorthy was followed by a routine dismissal of a depleted Antrim side to set up Sunday’s mouth-watering rematch.

“We lost to Wexford but, crucially, the girls knew that they performed. There wasn’t a whole pile more we could have done down there. We were unlucky and I think that anyone at the game saw that the girls belonged at that level. It was a much better performance than we had put in against Leitrim in the Connacht final, and certainly against Clare in the league final.

“Irrespective of Antrim’s issues, we had to go out and beat them. The score that the girls put up (5-11) has given them more confidence. I’d like to think that, in the players’ minds, they’re in a better place now than where they were six or seven weeks ago,” he concluded.

It’s a game Roscommon are capable of winning, seeing that their form is on an upward trajectory again, but it’s going to take their most complete performance of the season.

Leitrim will be the warmest of favourites and how they handle that expectation will have a huge bearing on the outcome. On home turf and in front of a partisan crowd, however, they will fancy their chances of completing the double over their neighbours.