So where are we now?
Niall Daly and Brian Stack try to halt Aidan O'Shea's gallop during the Connacht senior football semi-final in Dr. Hyde Park on Sunday week last. Picture: INPHO/James Lawlor
Here we are now, smack bang in the thick of it.
Loads of games done and dusted, the Rossies are out of the Connacht championship, and it's only the start of May. Crikey. This split season takes a bit of getting used to. I still like it though overall.
Anyway, where are we now? Seems like a good time of the year to take stock. Relegated to Division Two, lost to Mayo, and now waiting for another few weeks until the start of the race for Sam — which will be an away game to a provincial winner. I don’t like the way that fixture is falling to be honest.
The four-week run-in from the Mayo game to the first All-Ireland round robin game is ideal in some ways. It’s a chance to get a decent block of training in and really hone in on hitting a mini-peak for that game.
But I’d have much preferred if the first game was against a beaten provincial finalist. They’ll have just two weeks to dust themselves down and pick themselves up for the All-Ireland Series and, consequently, would be vulnerable, compared to a provincial winner who’ll be bouncing into these games high on confidence. Confidence —real, hard-earned confidence — is a mighty thing in a team, and the opposite is equally true.
I’ll go with the confidence issue for a moment. It has to be an issue for Roscommon at present. This deep team confidence only comes from consistent, battling victories on the playing field. But in the absence of this, teams will take any little spark they can find to build themselves up to delivering a big performance.
The hope is that Ros’ will find a spark in these next few weeks — it can come from a good challenge game, a tough training session, or the return of injured players. Sometimes it’s hard to explain, but things seem to click into place at a certain juncture in the season.
Famously, Kerry found their mojo in the 2006 All-Ireland qualifiers by moving Kieran Donaghy to full-forward. In winning a Connacht title in 2010, we hadn’t been going too well early in the season but a savagely tough training camp in the Curragh, which really bonded the group together, was a turning point for us.
The Rossies haven’t clicked into gear yet this year, and time is running out, but there’s the chance that these few weeks of a lead-in to the All-Ireland Series will see them come into form.
That’s the hope. As Red says in The Shawshank Redemption, “Hope is a dangerous thing. It can drive a man insane”. Are we going insane?
No. This Roscommon team give us hope for good reason. We have excellent footballers and are well entitled to enter any fixture with a hope we can produce a big performance. The team know this too.
The Mayo defeat will annoy them because we were easily good enough to have won that. Too many soft scores were conceded though. I keep thinking back to 1-2 in the first half — O’Shea’s goal and O’Donoghue’s two points from play. Good scores from Mayo’s point of view; very poor from a Ros’ point of view.
If we’re near our best, and defending with a championship level of intensity, those scores don’t happen, they don’t even get a shot away. We go in at half time leading by a few points and it’s a completely different ball game.
On the other side, offensively, I think we need to start threatening from more areas. So many attacks these days happen where the defensive team has 13 or 14 players in their own half. To break this down, teams have to be able to strike from anywhere.
We have defenders who are capable of taking on their men and punching holes in the opposition but this needs to happen more frequently. And we need to make hay then too. These players have to be able to go and take their scores.
Eoin McCormack did this the last day, and then followed it up with a brilliant support run through the heart of the Mayo defence and lashed a goal effort just wide. Had it gone in, we’d have been right back in it and may have sneaked a result, such was the momentum swing it would have generated. So, in spite of feeling like we’re not fully motoring yet, we’re not far away either. There’s hope.
So, back to the original question. Where are we now? General opinions seem to put us somewhere from 6-12 in the country. That’s hard to argue with. I’d say we are better than we have shown thus far this year and capable of getting to quarter-finals at least, but in the same, contradictory breath, I’ll use that old cliché that you’re only as good as your last game.
We live in hope, but a big improvement will be required to make an impact in the All-Ireland Series. Here’s hoping this Roscommon team find that spark.
I always look at our underage teams with a view to finding out if we have enough quality players coming through who can enhance our senior panel in the next few years.
Winning is secondary, although it’s a good sign if we are consistently being competitive at minor and U-20 level. This is certainly the case this year. The minors have two wins on the bounce, and play some really excellent football. The U-20s have their Connacht final next weekend, having topped the group. These are good signs.
What a U-20 provincial football championship it has been. It’s very unusual to have all five teams in the province being so competitive at the same time. This makes for a great competition, in much the same way that the national leagues are in some ways our best competitions as teams are playing against opponents of a similar level.
And so this Saturday brings a trip to a happy hunting ground, McHale Park, in search of an U-20 provincial title. The draw between Roscommon and Galway in the round-robin suggests that this will be another tight affair.
Will Galway ride the momentum wave having put up a big score against Sligo in the semi-final? Or will the extra week off for Roscommon have them fresher and primed to deliver their biggest performance of the competition yet?
We’ll travel in well-justified hope.
Best of luck to the Roscommon ladies’ team taking to the field in their first Connacht intermediate championship game this weekend.
With Sligo not taking full part as they are a junior team, these initial couple of rounds are essentially shadow boxing ahead of a final with Leitrim at the end of May.
The challenge for the management currently will be to time their run to hit a peak for the business end of the season in June and July.
Isn’t it great to see the Hyde looking so well?
Elsewhere in this column I talk about my favourite venues to have played football in. It’s safe to say that if I was playing now The Hyde would have been in the top two. The new seats are a great addition, but it’s the overall feel of the place that’s the big thing for me.
It’s a super playing surface, and there’s much more of a stadium-feel about the ground now. Much like the paint job on a new house — the clean finish around the ground now has given the whole place a lift.
Far from scientific, but here’s my top 5 GAA grounds to have played in…
1 Croke Park
2 Cusack Park, Mullingar
3 Semple Stadium
4 Johnstown (Clann na nGael)
5 Gaelic Grounds, Limerick
Right so, numbers 1, 3 and 5 should be fairly understandable. God only knows how I came up with 2 and 4.
I guess I really enjoyed playing in both grounds. Cusack Park has a nice, bowl feel to it — like the crowd is right on top of you, boundaries are very clear.
I always found it easier to play in pitches with stands all around, or buildings, anything to help get one’s bearings on the pitch. A contrast would be Kilbride, a fine pitch, but I hated playing there, way too open.
As regards Johnstown, the only thing that jumps out at me is the ball stops behind the goals. I always felt like they made it easier to target. Other than that, it makes no sense to me but it was definitely one of my favourite places to play ball.
I’ll continue with Top 5s every week. If you’ve any ideas of something to cover, send them to me and I may publish yours here along with my own. The topics can be anything sport-related, e.g. favourite ‘other’ sports, matches to have seen, goals of the championship, sportstars etc.
Send your ideas to me at mfinneran.mf@gmail.com.
