Sammon revelling in Rossies' passion

It’s the tail end of a wet Sunday morning in Creggs, and the only way to describe the scene is that it is the very essence of pre-season. A tough and physical session is finishing up with a soloing drill, and while some players are still going strong, others are tailing off, clearly having felt the effects of the preceding hour that bit more.

Roscommon’s 2024 senior hurling journey has begun.

The number of players togged out would just about make up a team, since in the absence of the Four Roads contingent, who were excused until this week, the panel is a bit light on numbers. Add in a few more absences due to injury, college commitments and other reasons, and numbers aren’t long dropping down into the teens.

And yet there is energy and positivity. For the new management team, headed up by Clare native Kevin Sammon, the process of forming a crucial early impression is still ongoing, so positivity isn’t just desirable, it’s essential.

2023 was a year of incredible turmoil in Roscommon GAA, featuring managerial upheaval and some remarkably poor results, but there were bright spots too, most notably the U-20s reaching an All-Ireland final and a league final victory in Navan.

Still, the club scene continues to underwhelm, and Four Roads’ heavy defeat to Tooreen, coming as it did at the end of the championship where they in turn were a long way ahead of the chasing pack, offered no evidence of an easy path to progress. Some up-and-coming managers might even shy away from the Roscommon job for that very reason, since it could easily be a reputation killer. Just ask Francis O’Halloran.

Except instead of asking his fellow Banner County man, Sammon is instead embracing the challenge, and focusing on the unique energy that drives the hurling scene here.

“There’s no point being cosy all your life,” is how he responds to the opening gambit, which is why he chose to take on this particular role.

“It’s great coming up here because while it is a challenge, the hunger and the appetite that people have shown for hurling is unbelievable. Everyone’s eager, and what we ask players to do here at training, they did it, and that’s the attitude I meet everywhere, it’s all positive and good.

“I’d know lads from Roscommon down the years and they’d be every bit as passionate about it as would be the case in Clare. Football might be number one in the county as a whole, but in that pocket of hurling that exists. They’re mad for the sport and that makes your job a little bit easier if they have that interest, you’re not coaxing lads along”.

Coaxing has certainly been part of every Roscommon hurling manager’s remit in recent years, as it’s hard to recall a time when anyone could confidently say that all the best players in the county were available for selection. Whether that continues to be an issue under this regime remains to be seen since Sammon is happy to keep the door open for players to come on board in the short term at least, so it’s only when that window starts to close in that he will say definitively who is in, and more importantly who is out, for 2024.

Regardless of the make-up of his panel, he says he’s setting one key goal for the management group for the year ahead.

“To develop and improve players,” he replies.

“If you can bring the standard of hurling up at every step of the way, Connacht league into the National League and on into the Nickey Rackard, that’s the goal. Roscommon is in the Nickey Rackard Cup for a reason but we all want to go a step further and maybe two steps higher in time. It’s not going to be easy, nothing’s easy in sport because other counties are every bit as hungry as you. But if we develop and improve, ultimately to go up a step or two in time is the plan."

Somewhat controversially, an open door policy when it comes to recruitment from outside the county has been seen as a shortcut to development in the past, and while the quality of some of the players that have come into the county panel while doing their hurling elsewhere is beyond doubt, Sammon’s not looking to cast a wide net. If a stray fish should swim by of their own accord, so be it, but he’s content with the pond that’s there right now.

“This management team have no-one new brought into that (outside recruitment).

“It would be great if you could have 30 guys that are from the county, hurling in the county, all together. But the guys who are involved for the moment have hurled for Roscommon already and we’re certainly not going to tell those guys that they can’t play, we’d never do that to anyone.

“We’re here because we love hurling and we want to improve Roscommon hurling,”

“Everything from the past is behind us. There’s no point looking back at what went on in the last couple of years, we’re a new management team, we’re looking forward, and whatever it takes, I want to bring progression, improvement, development, stability”.

Tick those boxes, and this new regime will make plenty of friends in Roscommon’s pocket of hurling.