‘Roscommon are useless’ taunt leaves a sour taste

SOME may bemoan the lack of value for the price of their ticket into last Sunday’s Connacht senior football final between Galway and Roscommon, but if ever they were to question the annual worth of their TV licence you would expect they would be – or should be – far more incensed.

If the best analysis of Roscommon’s performance by an ‘expert’ TV pundit is that ‘Roscommon are useless’, then it is high time RTE assesses if that pundit is offering anything really other than silly soundbites.

Then again, this is the same pundit that once described Cavan football as ugly as an RTE colleague and, on another occasion, launched a personal attack on Tyrone’s Sean Cavanagh by ranting “in so far as he’s a man, you can forget about it”.

While the one-time Derry All-Ireland winner and TV pundit Joe Brolly, who earlier this year published a death notice for his own county in a Sunday newspaper, apologised for those outbursts, the serial offender is unlikely to be issuing such a declaration to Roscommon fans ahead of the Connacht final replay at MacHale Park, Castlebar on Sunday.

At any rate, the Rossies will be the first to acknowledge that their display at Pearse Stadium was arguably one of their poorer showings and Brolly’s public assassination of Roscommon should add fuel to their fire when they head to McHale Park.

Defensively, there was little between Roscommon and Galway but the pace Galway showed when transitioning from defence to attack was far more incisive and adept. Consequently, they created significantly more scoring opportunities but a return of 13 from 26 cost them the win.

Roscommon, on the other hand, struggled to breach Galway’s lines but the one time they did get inside the 20metre line it led to Enda Smith bungling the ball to the net to ensure Roscommon led 1-6 to 0-6 at the change of ends.

Sadly, moments like these were few and far between from Roscommon, who laboured their way through most of the game. When Galway ball was overturned, the injection of pace that was required to get in behind their opponent’s rearguard was alarmingly lacking. There was no urgency.

As a result, with the Galway players back in their defensively positions, Roscommon were then reduced to the only other viable way of beating the cover – shooting from distance. To a certain extent, it worked as Ros midfielder Niall Daly landed two booming efforts.

However, as Dublin found out against Donegal in the 2014 All-Ireland semi-final, it is difficult to sustain this. The idea is that opposition sides will be drawn out but the disciplined teams will happily cough up a couple of points from distance to reduce the number of scoring opportunities to their rivals inside.

For more, read this week’s Galway City Tribune.