Top five reasons for hope for the Rossies after this year’s championship

A chance missed. So that’s that. Goodbye 2024 intercounty season. One week on from the euphoric high in Omagh to a disappointing day in Croker.

It feels like we had precious little time to enjoy the good stuff. We wanted a performance of similar passion and vigour to back up the defeat of Tyrone, but read below my top five reasons for Rossie optimism.

Circumstances coincided to make that very difficult. The early injuries rocked us. Not so much at the time but they took away the management’s best weapons for injecting new energy into proceedings in the second half.

We’d have preferred a drier sod too. It looked very slippery. Ball handling wasn’t as crisp and, crucially, shooting became trickier. Where on a fine day we’d be comfortable stroking it over from 40 yards out, we needed to work it slightly closer to be within range. Even then, our accuracy wasn’t where it needed to be.

And then there’s the fact we played the whole second half with 14 men. In some aspects of the game it wasn’t much of a factor, but it did make it really difficult to put sufficient pressure on the Armagh kickout when we needed to. Now the extra man wasn’t the only reason for this being an issue for us; it’s an area we’ve struggled with for a while.

And finally, faced with a mass orange defence, we continued to play very safe football, not taking on the opposition enough to force any holes in the blanket. To be fair, this style has worked for us to an extent, but it relies on really excellent shooting from distance.

So, in a nutshell, I think that’s what it came down to. And it’s why we couldn’t replicate our performance from seven days previous. The three key areas were our shooting efficiency, our inability to turn over the Armagh kickout, and our cautiousness in attack.

Our shooters have been fantastic all through the All-Ireland series, as good as any team’s in the country, but they just didn’t hit those heights on Saturday evening. In that scenario, we didn’t show we had enough other tools to break down the Armagh rear-guard. I don’t remember Blaine Hughes in the Armagh goal having one save to make.

One area we have seen improvement in though has been the scoring contribution from further back the field. This is something I’ve mentioned a few times, the lack of scoring threats from outside of our main forwards.

On Saturday we saw some terrific examples. Niall Higgins hit a fine first half point off his left boot, while Eoin McCormack started the second half off in style with a good strike from distance, and Dylan Ruane finished off two good team moves with points. Then, to cap off the scoring contribution from the backs, Brian Stack hit the point of the day late on after a powerful run through the middle and a one-two with Diarmuid Murtagh.

That late Stack point though tells its own tale. He showed the kind of cut and thrust that we didn’t see enough of in attacking areas. And if we were going to mount the comeback that this inspirational score could have kick-started, we had to be able to pressure the resultant kickout. We were unable to do this though. Every time we tried to squeeze, Armagh just seemed too strong for us in the middle third.

The kickout press is a major part of the game these days and teams devote large chunks of time to perfecting it. We set up quite well and bravely. We’re happy to leave a couple of opposition forwards unmarked at our end and squeeze all our backs up past the 45, and the goalkeeper too. The GAA pitch is huge though, and you need the players to be able to cover the ground very quickly in these situations, to switch from closing off one sector to another. And once the ball is in the air, you’ve got to always challenge for it, and have swarms of support players arriving once it inevitably hits the deck. We’re just not very good at this and it means we can struggle to put consecutive scores together.

I’ll explain what I mean about the cautious attacking too. We almost always went for safe passes. We probed over and back, waiting for a gap to open up, but never really forcing it. Gaps invariably open, against all teams, once you probe for long enough, but they’re small gaps and you need to really have your shooting boots on to take advantage. We didn’t bring those boots with us on Sunday.

In our cautiousness, we were often unwilling to take players on. We turned back from the tackle rather than drive through it and commit support runners to rip through the blanket. This meant that the biggest thing Armagh had to worry about was getting enough pressure on our outside shooters when they took aim, and they did this very well.

Now it’s very easy for me to say we should be more adventurous in attack. The safety-first approach means we seldom leave ourselves open to counter attacks. So it’s actually an effective defensive tool, but the main problem as I mentioned earlier is that it relies on superb shooting to be effective.

For Roscommon to progress and hurt these teams regularly, we’ll have to play with more thrust in attack. That means some riskier plays, yes, but we’ve got to be aiming to hit 18 points or more to win these games. Some quicker transition play would also help, and I believe we’d then see more opportunities to play the longer ball into the danger area.

For the players, I’d imagine this defeat will sting, as it was a great opportunity to advance to an All-Ireland semi-final.

I’ve purposefully avoided using the ‘three games in two weeks’ situation as a factor in this defeat. While I think it is something that’s worth looking at for the fixture-makers in future, Galway gave lie to it playing a major role at the weekend. I exited Croke Park at half time as I suspected the Dubs would cruise to victory in the second half. How wrong I was!

Galway, also playing their third game in two weeks, brought their game to a new level in the second half to cause a massive upset. This will rub further salt in the Ros players’ wounds. They’ll feel they’re on a similar level to Galway, but we’re the ones resigned to watching the rest of the All-Ireland from the outside.

Roscommon Ladies Bow Out

And so it was that both of our flagship football teams bowed out on the same weekend, and at the same stage of the competition.

The ladies played out a humdinger with a Leitrim side who, to be fair to them, have really improved in recent years and have now got the upper hand on the Rossiettes in three of their last four meetings.

As the scoreline suggests, the problem for Roscommon was at the defensive end. It was a very open game, really exciting end to end stuff, but too open from a Ros point of view. Leitrim got on top against many of our best players and limited their influence and this was a big factor in the result.

Overall, while the year started with much promise, and promotion to Division 2 was an impressive feat, they’ll look back on this as a disappointing championship season.

On a side note, I see that Helena Cummins received a presentation after the game to mark 103 senior appearances for Roscommon. It’s quite the feat and one achieved by precious few. Helena is one of the best keepers in the country and has been a huge asset to the team for years.

Top Five Reasons for Rossie Optimism 

In spite of the two defeats there’s still cause for optimism looking ahead.

Here’s my top five reasons for hope for the Rossies after this year’s championship.

•Emergence of new frontline players, like Niall Higgins, Robbie Dolan and Daire Cregg.

• Good age profile. None of our current panel should be thinking of retiring just yet and we should also hope to welcome back a few lads who didn’t play this year (e.g. Ciaran Murtagh, Cian McKeown, Ben O’Carroll, Conor Daly).

• Performance of underage teams, and the U-20s in particular, show that the conveyor belt is well oiled.

•Ladies similarly have a very good age profile and should be able to keep current panel together.

•Promotion for the Ladies to Division 2 means we will benefit from being exposed to competing with stronger, senior teams again.

Please continue to send your thoughts and ideas for this column to me at mfinneran.mf@gmail.com