The thinner air leads to finer margins

Should have. Could have. Would have.

Roscommon are finding out the tough way that when the air gets thinner, the higher you climb. There’s less room for error.

Oh, how far we’ve come in a short space of time.

At the beginning of the year, we’d have been very happy to know that we’d be delivering this level of performance in front of a big crowd in the Hyde in the All-Ireland Series.

The super displays in Connacht have set a new standard now and the trick is to live up to it in every game. We didn’t quite manage it this time. It was a good performance against very good opposition.

The thing that will annoy Ros’ most is that it didn’t feel like we were simply beaten by a better team. Rather, we made too many unforced errors, which helped the opposition get over the line.

I could imagine that Mark Dowd and his management team’s analysis of this defeat will feature a lot of “should have, could have, would haves”. We should have gone long on that kickout that led to Tyrone’s third goal. We could have kept the ball out of contact more often. Put simply, we would have won had we cut out even a few of our many unforced errors.

All is far from lost. I’m somewhat enthused by the fact that our below-par performance was still of a very high standard. It would leave you confident that this group can go away, fix a few minor glitches, and come back to an even higher level again.

The positives are plentiful. Forefront in my mind is Senan Lambe. He has had a terrific year thus far, regularly hitting a high standard, but on Sunday I felt he went to a whole new level. Tackling, blocking, winning dirty ball, driving past defenders — he did it all and he did it all brilliantly.

Another big plus was our midfield. The kickouts were an intriguing battle throughout. Keith Doyle and Conor Ryan — and Shane Cunnane when he was introduced — gave as good as they got against an excellent pairing in Brian Kennedy and Conn Kilpatrick.

I think both teams got a lot right on their own kickouts. Aside from the costly mistake for Tyrone’s third goal, Conor Carroll was terrific. On the other side, Niall Morgan was superb too. Their level of accuracy off the tee was ridiculous.

Kieran McGeeney coined that phrase, “piggery”, a few weeks ago in relation to the constant battle of hordes for breaking ball.

Very often on Sunday, on long kickouts, it wasn’t so much piggery as it was fine dining for the high fielders. Morgan and Carroll regularly laid it on a plate for their midfielders. One from Carroll to Keith Doyle, straight down the middle in the first half must have travelled about 60 yards. It led to an easy score for us.

Morgan wasn’t to be outdone. In the second half, he hit a massive one, maybe 70 yards long, which landed in the path of Conn Kilpatrick running towards the Roscommon goal. These lads, Morgan and Carroll, were slinging arrows with masterful accuracy and it really was a joy to behold.

Darragh Heneghan did well again, even though Tyrone will be quite pleased that they very rarely offered him the space he was afforded in Connacht. Still, he was impactful, especially with that great goal early on. There’s an audible hum of excitement and anticipation now every time he gets on the ball in the final third.

Diarmuid Murtagh was probably our next best player after Lambe. On limited opportunities, he managed to plunder eight points. He looks really sharp.

I’m thinking he has done some serious work on his agility. For example, when he lined up a two-pointer in the second half with two Tyrone lads bearing down on him, he showed real fleet of foot to dummy solo and accelerate in behind the defenders before drawing the foul and an easy free.

IMPRESSIVE TYRONE

Tyrone were impressive, and that win will have been a really big one for them. It was a coming of age performance from Eoin McElholm. Ronan Cassidy is another youngster who really delivered for them. He was Darragh Heneghan-like in the way he raced away from Dylan Ruane before burying the ball in the roof of the net.

Ethan Jordan is a bit older than those two but he, too, is a relative newcomer and he caused us a lot of bother on Sunday. I thought Mattie Donnelly was quiet in the first half but did grow into it as the game wore on and obviously finished his goal chance well.

When you think that Darren McCurry only came on towards the end, and that the two Canavans are waiting in the wings to return, then that’s a serious pack of attacking cards to deal with.

We know they have a serious midfield and then there’s the makings of a strong defence behind them, although I thought any time Roscommon held onto the ball for long enough we looked like we could open them up.

Peter Teague was tasked with tracking Enda Smith and overall he did well, even though Enda did end up scoring 1-1.

Cormac Quinn and Michael McKernan also did well defensively for them. There’s no doubting they are a very strong team, and it’ll be interesting to see how they progress after this. Their poor league form clearly hasn’t continued to the championship as they almost beat Armagh six weeks ago and backed that up with the win on Sunday.

They’ll take some beating, although when it comes down to it, I suspect their undoing will be their defence. In the cold light of day, maybe the same could be said of Roscommon. Yes, tidying up on a few unforced errors will lead to significant improvement for us, but the next level up would be getting tighter across our back line.

As I said, the air is thinner at the top. The margins are finer. Our defenders have been brilliant throughout this championship, but we’ll need to get them to an even higher level. That means being even stickier in our tracking of movement, and more disciplined in tackling, so that we can stop a run like McElholm’s which won the deciding free on Sunday.

It’s onwards and upwards we go. Everything we’ve seen from this team so far this year tells us that they’re going to continue to work hard and improve.

Three weeks to the next game is ideal. Barring Kerry, is there any team we’d really worry about getting in the draw? I think not.