'The players are the ones crossing the white line'

GAA: Connacht SFC Final Preview

Kevin Egan

His Galway roots may still be there, but in what is now his fourth year in charge of the footballers representing his adopted county of Roscommon, the emotional element of taking on the men in maroon is not something that Anthony Cunningham perceives as a significant aspect when it comes to Sunday’s Connacht final at Pearse Stadium (1.45pm).

The two counties have become regular rivals now, with the 2019 Connacht final in Salthill and last year’s rain-soaked semi-final at Dr Hyde Park probably the most significant meetings during his tenure. However when it comes to preparing for the game, the colour of the jerseys won’t be something that he plans to dwell on, any more than past meetings, either in 2022 or prior to that.

He described the league wins at the Hyde and Croke Park as “massive for confidence”, but argued that Galway’s two wins in the Connacht championship are a much more accurate barometer of where the Tribesmen are at.

“No disrespect to the league, whether it’s in football or in hurling, but league form goes out the window if you don’t have your championship right. Your frame of mind has to be right. For us, you use the league to get better and build your confidence, how you play and play to systems, get better and blood new players,” he said at the Roscommon press function at the TUS International Arena in Athlone.

“In that regard we have been successful but the two performances against Galway won’t matter a bit really. They won’t put any scores on the board on the next day.

“As for the personal aspect, my role is that of the manager, the players are the ones crossing the white line and playing the game, it’ll be how they perform and the mindset that they bring to the occasion that will determine the result.”

Unsurprisingly, his response to a question on what Roscommon will have taken from the league final victory didn’t offer much insight to any Galway ears that might have been tuned in.

“You just have to put more scores on the board, defend better and play better. For us, we’ll be trying to go through the pieces from the league final to get better at. I’m sure the opposition will do the same.

“Obviously, we look at the opposition but Galway and Roscommon know each other so well. They know each other’s styles, so we expect that it’s going to be a really tough assignment. They were excellent against Mayo. Everyone was on about them conceding a few late scores but I thought they were really competent throughout. They took some fine scores, controlled the game and played it on their terms. They’ll be really buoyed up by that performance.”

Roscommon’s Connacht campaign has been a lot more straightforward – one outing in Sligo that resulted in a comfortable win, in no small part because of a straight red card to a Sligo defender early in the game.

Cunningham freely admitted that it wasn’t a contest that will bear any resemblance to the type of battle that awaits his team in Pearse Stadium.

“They’re always tricky assignments, playing a team in their own back yard,” he observed.

“The sending-off was really a turning point. But you’d expect Sligo to bounce back in the Tailteann Cup. We saw there was very little between Kildare, the fancied team, and Westmeath (in the Leinster semi-final). Nobody would have expected that Derry would have got to the final in Ulster, so it shows up the form in the top part of Division Two.

“Since the Sligo game it has been business as usual, just training away. It was good to get a break as well. I suppose we were one of the luckier teams to have a three to four weeks of a lead-in. A lot of teams play Sunday after Sunday. You always need a week to recover from injuries no matter what match you’re playing in the championship. For example, it’s good to have Richard (Hughes) back. He had a tremendous league was subsequently unfortunate with a back injury for a few weeks. Thankfully, that’s come right.”

While 2021 was a difficult season for Roscommon, featuring five competitive games and five defeats – albeit all to top level opposition – there was some unrest in the county at the frequent sight of scoring forwards spending large chunks of the game inside their own half. This year, there has been a significant shift in that approach, though Cunningham did say that 2021 was incredibly tough due to the unique restraints imposed on county teams.

“It was difficult during Covid. The league was shorter and we were in Division One with just three other teams, there was no pre-season. You were relying on guys training on their own. Collectively, we were probably behind.

“I’m not saying that other counties did more, but they probably did. We obeyed the Covid rules. You had to do that at the time. It was difficult on all sides. I think everyone had a slight fear of catching the virus.

“But that doesn’t excuse the day in the Hyde against Galway last year. It was a poor performance. Definitely, seven or eight guys played way below par, and still there wasn’t a whole pile in it at the finish. We were in hard luck for a goal, which could have been a game-changing score, and then we ended up conceding a really sloppy goal. No matter if you’re Liverpool or Man City, if you don’t take your chances, you’re a goner and you’ll get punished in championship.

“We have natural forwards, and even for the subs that come in there’s a lot of emphasis on being able to score alongside being able to transition properly and defenders being able to contribute on the scoreboard. That’s just the way the game has gone, and it will continue to evolve every couple of years. But you really have to be on top of your game defensively to hold out the likes of (Damien) Comer, (Shane) Walsh and (Robert) Finnerty. So, we’re going to be really tested on both fronts,” added the former Garrycastle and St Brigid's manager.