‘We know where we stand’ — Dowd

Mark Dowd jokes that being married with three young children under seven years of age means that his elevation to Roscommon senior football manager could hardly be described as “perfect timing”. But being at the helm of his county’s flagship football team has always been on the radar.

To be fair to him, the Strokestown native has earned the right after learning the ropes on the intercounty and club scenes since bursting on the scene as part of Fergal O’Donnell’s all-conquering minor football management team in 2006.

With such a large tranche of experience being removed from the Roscommon dressing room as a result of retirements in recent months, there are challenges. But Dowd is prepared to meet them head on, leaning on his experience as a local to make Roscommon consistently competitive against the top sides in the land.

“There was no good or bad time to take it. When you get these opportunities, you have to take them because they might never come around again.

“I felt that I’d always like a crack at it at some stage. I didn’t have a timeframe in terms of when it was going to be. I just felt that if that call came to go for an interview, I’d go for it. Thankfully, it has worked out for me,” he reflected.

With collective training now up and running, the panel had already met a few times, setting out their goals for the year.

Darragh Heneghan (Michael Glaveys) and Eoin Ward (Fuerty), alongside Pádraig Pearses players Jack Tumulty, Conor Ryan, Eoin Colleran, Seán Canning and Mark Richardson are among the new faces on the panel. St. Dominic’s defender, Eoin McCormack, has returned from taking a year out to buttress the experience in the squad.

With Roscommon teams doing well on the club scene recently, Dowd is preparing for the reality that he may be without some familiar faces for the start of his tenure.

“It’s not ideal, but isn’t it great to see one team (Strokestown) winning a provincial title. Hopefully St. Brigid’s can do the same.

“The way I look at it is the further Strokestown and St. Brigid’s can go, the better those players become. Isn’t that a good thing for everyone? It might show someone up in another game that wasn’t in our plans or hadn’t stepped up.

“That’s what I’ve seen game by game – the likes of Strokestown and St. Brigid’s improving, and that’s great for the standard of football in Roscommon.” 

While, internally, there will always be high hopes for Roscommon, there’s no getting away from the national perception that the Rossies are a “yo-yo” team when it comes to league football.

By the time 2026 rolls around, it will be seven years since a provincial championship title was garnered, while the “Primrose and Blue” haven’t won a championship game in Croke Park since the All-Ireland semi-final victory against Armagh in 1981.

In other words, there are plenty of historical barriers to be broken down.

“We’re outside the top four or five,” admitted Dowd.

“We’ve had transition down through the years where we’ve had experience around the panel with a blend of younger players coming into it. That won’t be any different.

“You see the quality of the guys that have stepped away from the panel, so we’re looking to try and get a balanced team — a team that’s going to be fit enough to compete in Division One.

“We know where we stand. We’re outside the top few teams, but our aim is to push on and see if we can compete with those big boys, and see how far we can get,” he explained.

To achieve that goal, the new manager highlights that other players will have to step up to the plate in the absence of retirees Ciaráin Murtagh, Donie Smith and Niall Daly.

“That’s the challenge for a lot of the guys still there. The likes of Enda (Smith), Diarmuid (Murtagh) and Ronan Daly have been around the panel a good while. They’d be the fellas you’d be looking to in terms of driving it on and for the younger lads to be looking up them, and realising how they got to that level.

“Even if they look at Ciaráin, Niall and Donie, and the exceptional service and commitment they have given to Roscommon, they’ll have learned something. Those lads gave everything to the jersey, and that’s what we’re looking for,” he noted.

While Dowd’s initial challenge will be to prepare a panel to be in “peak physical condition” to compete with the top teams in Division One, being the first Roscommon native to take sole charge of the team since Des Newton in 2012 is something he hopes can get fires burning inside the bellies of players and supporters alike.

“I’m an in-house Roscommon man. I know the players that are in there. With the lads alongside me in the backroom team (John Rogers and Iain Daly), we know Roscommon football inside out. We know what’s coming through.

“I have a close connection with U-20 manager Cian Smith. Between us all, we feel that we know what players will be able to step up to this level.

“Given where the team are at the moment, I feel that it’s important to have local men involved — people who have knowledge of the Roscommon scene.

“When you’re involved with your own team, it brings a lot of pride and a lot of passion. We want a good work ethic within the squad, having that bit of passion and that bit of pride, and knowing that when you’re in the trenches, you’re able to eke out those results.

“If we can get those things right as opposed to looking at bigger targets, we’ll see what happens after that,” he explained.

The addition of former Dublin All-Ireland winning footballer, Jason Sherlock, to the management ticket in recent weeks will, hopefully, represent another layer of knowledge that will get the best out of the panel.

“My conversations with Jason started seven or eight weeks ago. He obviously wanted to know where we were and what we were looking to do.

“Like everything, you don’t step into a job unless you know what the targets are. He liked what we were trying to do within the squad. He could see, with the local guys involved, that we had a good understanding of where we were at.

“I feel he has a lot of experience. He has been involved in teams at the highest level. With his background between GAA, soccer and basketball, there’s a wealth of experience. So I just felt he was a good guy to tap into. He’s a great guy to bounce stuff off, and he sets high standards,” he highlighted.

Roscommon are already pencilled in to face New York in early April, and if momentum from that trip can be generated to be in with a shout of winning the Nestor Cup, albeit there may be a Connacht semi-final against Mayo looming, Dowd wants his players to be in a position to grasp that opportunity.

“There are very few teams that get the chance to go out there (to New York). You’ve got to embrace it. From what I’m hearing, there’s a big following heading out. It’s the kind of trip that can gel a county — supporters, players and management.

“Obviously, we want to get out of there with a win. But we’ll be looking to have a bit of pride in what we’re doing when we’re over there and showcase what Roscommon is about.

“Overall, the Connacht championship is there as one of the targets. Any time you play any of the teams in Connacht, you want to beat them.

“Any time we’ve won a Connacht final, it has set the tone as the year has gone on. It’s a natural stepping stone. Obviously winning a provincial title gives you confidence as well. If we’re able to go and do that, that’s great,” he opined.

There was a general expectation that the new rules would suit Roscommon’s attack but, as last season took shape, that didn’t transpire — something Dowd will be taking into account as he develops tactics and game plans.

“It’s obviously something you have to think long and hard about when you are setting up your systems of play. We have top quality forwards in Roscommon. When you have three quality forwards up there, you want to try and use them as best you can. Can we get the ball up to them quickly is the challenge?” 

But the high standard on show during the recent Roscommon Senior Football Championship is a nugget of comfort that Dowd hopes to utilise to the team’s advantage.

“The way I’d look at it is that we’ll have a lot of players from the two senior finalists (St. Brigid’s and Pádraig Pearses) around the panel.

“The standard in Roscommon is very good, even that semi-final between St. Brigid’s and Clann na nGael where there wasn’t a lot in it. Outside of the top two teams, there are teams thinking that if they can get it right on any given day, they can compete as well.

“It sets the standard, and you could see from the Brigid’s/Ballina game that the games Brigid’s had got in Roscommon stood to them. However, it mightn’t be like that every year,” he acknowledged.

And his overall message as he prepares to start out on his biggest three years in management?

“You see the way the panel is shaping up. There’s experience gone out of it, but there are quality young lads coming through. That’s going to take time to bed in. You can’t expect these players to adapt to our system straight away.

“No matter what management comes in, they’re going to have their own ideas. For players to get used to that, it could take months, or it could be into year two before that finally beds in.

“But we’re going out with the intention of performing in every game. We want to be in the last five minutes of every game. If we can do that, it will, hopefully, be a stepping stone to where this team can go in the next couple of years,” he concluded.