Stars align for victory like no other

The 1968 Buffalo Bills still stand alone as the only NFL/AFL team who won just one game in a professional season, but for that win to come against the eventual Super Bowl winners — in this case, Joe Namath’s New York Jets.

That Bills team is also notorious since their utter ineptitude is the reason the world had to suffer the ubiquitous virus that is the Kardashian family.

After all, it’s because the 1968 Bills were so dreadful that they got the number one pick in the 1969 draft, with which they selected Orenthal James (OJ) Simpson. OJ Simpson went on to become the NFL’s leading rusher, using that notoriety to gain the attention of 18-year-old Nicole Brown, while he was still married to his first wife, Marguerite Whitley.

Simpson went on to marry Brown, to be accused of her murder, and then acquitted, having entrusted his defence to celebrity lawyer Robert Kardashian. That notoriety for Robert Kardashian was enough to ensure that when his daughter Kim recorded herself with Ray J in 2007, the wheels were in motion for the entire family to gain worldwide fame.

All because one football team — nearly 40 years ago — was spectacularly terrible.

There were times last Sunday when it felt like Roscommon had captured lightning in a bottle and that, in their case too, the unintended consequences of seemingly unrelated events all came together to create the magic.

Mayo’s difficulty in kicking two-pointers under Kevin McStay in 2025? That was a factor.

Paul Carey narrowly missing the free that could have given Pádraig Pearses the Fahey Cup last October? Absolutely a factor.

An unspecified number of working-age adults from the West of Ireland pretending to be older than they really were? You better believe that was a factor.

For most Roscommon Herald readers, it doesn’t need to be said that all of these inadvertent ‘Sliding Doors’ moments are irrelevant if a group of players doesn’t show up in peak physical condition, with the natural talent and ability to take advantage of a day like Sunday.

Absolutely, Roscommon looked like a sharper, better-coached, mentally stronger team from start to finish, but they got all the “on the day” stuff right too. 

Scoring 1-17 without a wide? That’s the footballing equivalent of a 147 break or a nine-dart finish, you could be on top of your game for a long time and still there’s always one dart that goes the wrong side of the wire, or one pot that rattles in the jaws and stays out.

Sunday was the day when everything worked out smoothly, including countless things that were never part of the script.

Let’s start with Mayo’s two-point shooting. In 2025, it was the team’s single biggest weakness. Mayo reached the final of the national league and still kicked just ten doubles in eight games. In 2026, they hit 26 in seven.

This was by design. One of Andy Moran’s first decisions was to recall Robert Hennelly, a decision that was vindicated when the Raheny clubman landed three frees from outside of the arc on the first day of the league in Salthill.

Ryan O’Donoghue shot eight in seven games, thriving in his new role on the 45-metre line. Kevin McStay was a noted advocate of playing the game as it unfolds and allowing players the freedom to make decisions in the heat of battle, but under Moran, Mayo focused on creating those opportunities from distance. When the Mayo boss was with Monaghan a year ago, Rory Beggan topped the charts for two-point kickers with 24 orange flags in all. Of course, Moran would want to recreate that magic with his native county.

But like every priority choice, it came at a cost.

Across the league, Mayo shot 12-142 and 7-30 of that came from their starting inside forwards. In Ruislip against London in the Connacht quarter-final, it was 0-8 from 0-31. Across the year, less than three points in every ten that they scored came from the inside line, much lower than the general average.

That lack of scoring threat close to goal, even allowing for Kobe McDonald’s heroics on Sunday, meant that when the tide started to go against Mayo, they were unable to create simple, handy scores to stem the flow.

Even when they were thriving in the first half, it was highlights reel scores from distance — such as those points from Kobe, Conor Loftus and Paddy Durcan — or else a close-range effort like that of Bob Tuohy which was a goal missed more so than a point scored.

So when the bleeding started, they had no easy band-aid to hand.

Then there was the kickout issue. Roscommon regularly punished stray restarts from Hennelly and the quick intercepts from Rob Heneghan and Diarmuid Murtagh that yielded 1-1 for the St. Faithleach’s sharpshooter were particularly relevant.

Now we move to the dishonest rogues lying about their age. This isn’t a reference to Tinder chicanery, but John Prenty’s claim that too many younger adults were claiming pensioner status at the gates of Connacht GAA games, which he said justified this year’s price increases.

Given the impressive league campaign that both teams produced and the beautiful weather that bathed Castlebar on Sunday, a crowd of 15,321 was somewhat underwhelming. It doesn’t take an economist to understand that price affects demand in these situations.

Moreover, that crowd wasn’t concentrated in the main stand, where the noise would be amplified and acoustically boosted before it reached the ears of the players on the pitch.

Supporters were scattered around the ground into the cheaper sections, and children — invariably the most vocal supporters of them all — were particularly spread out across three sides of MacHale Park.

Now, home advantage could well be termed home disadvantage in recent years in the Connacht championship. Roscommon will attempt to end a dismal run of results in Dr. Hyde Park against Galway on Sunday week, while Mayo have now played 12 consecutive Connacht championships without recording a home win over either Galway or Roscommon.

Nonetheless, Mayo needed a spark in the second half, and if the stadium had been as loud as we might have expected if the stand was full and there were upwards of 20,000 people there, then perhaps they might have built on Kobe’s incredible point in the 41st minute that left a trail of discombobulated Rossie defenders in his wake.

Eight minutes later, there was another potentially rousing moment when Mayo gang-tackled Colm Neary and Rob Heneghan, worked the ball up the field and fisted a point through a talisman of their own, Paddy Durcan.

It was the only time in the second half Mayo put two scores back-to-back, and we’ve all seen games where the home crowd would turn a small attacking wave into a tsunami.

Pretend pensioners ensured that on Sunday, there was no such tidal surge.

Then there was last year’s county final, specifically the drawn game. This is not about the rights and wrongs of the awarding of that late free, but just the consequences that no-one considered at the time.

Let’s imagine that Paul Carey splits the posts, and Pearses retained their title. Brian Stack, Ruaidhrí Fallon and their colleagues rest up for a month, and as a unit, the St. Brigid’s cohort are fresh and ready for the very start of the 2026 season.

Do Pearses go all the way to the All-Ireland final? Maybe, maybe not. Does Caelim Keogh get a sustained run in a key position in the back line, to the point that on Sunday, he’s put on the main inside threat, i.e. McDonald, if Pearses win that game? Probably not.

Does Eoin Ward get the chance to nail down a spot in the half-back line if Brian Stack and Ruaidhrí Fallon are available, albeit Ronan Daly might not be? It’s impossible to tell. Does Darragh Heneghan get to show off his other-worldly speed and the damage it can do, if Conor Hand is ready to hit the ground running for the end of January and the trip to Kerry? Probably not.

Jim McGuinness and Jack O’Connor didn’t leave any of their stars aside for long runs of consecutive league games, there’s no reason to believe Mark Dowd would have.

But, this was a Roscommon performance built around speed, electricity, energy and fearlessness. None of that is to say that Stack, Fallon, and maybe Hand and a few more, won’t have bigger roles to play as the summer progresses, but what Roscommon are looking at now is a panel of players where there could be well be more than 20 players that are well worth a starting berth, a panel where there is more pace and line-breaking ability than ever before, and that only came about because Dowd had his hand forced by the absence of the Kiltoom contingent.

Even allowing for this management team’s intimate knowledge of the local scene and the players, the Strokestown man would have been delighted with a strike rate of 50 per cent or more on the half a dozen unproven youngsters that were given their window of opportunity. Sunday’s game effectively showed a full house, a perfect strike rate, on his novices.

Let’s not take credit away. Look at the discipline, the fitness, the cohesion — that only happens if management create a vision and give players ample reason to believe they can bring it to reality, and also if the players match that imagination with graft and honesty.

This Roscommon group did all that, which is why they were capable of winning this Connacht semi-final. But the stars aligned, in ways never previously imagined, to ensure that it was a win like no other.