Cunningham guarded on future after Clare defeat

Roscommon senior football manager Anthony Cunningham refused to be drawn on his future in the role, following last Saturday's dramatic defeat to Clare at Croke Park.

The Banner men staged an amazing revival, turning a five-point deficit into a one-point victory (2-15 to 1-17) to secure a place in the All-Ireland quarter-finals as Roscommon crashed out.

“This is not about me, this is about the players, and the supporters, and everybody who is part of Roscommon football," said Cunningham, who has now completed four seasons in charge.

"Everybody will be gutted because everybody, from the bottom of their heart, want Roscommon to progress and we saw today as a massive stepping stone for this team.

"We’ve been knocked back, but I’m sure that we’ll rise again.

“How big a setback this defeat is will only be answered by how they (the players) apply themselves next year, how they develop and how they kick on from this. For us, they’ve really responded, we’ve had excellent coaching, an excellent backroom team, the amount of work that was done with these guys was incredible.

“We all love what we’re doing, we give every ounce of energy we have to it, so the matter of continuing is for another day,” he continued.

On the game itself, Cunningham said: “I thought Clare were that bit sharper than us in the first half, but we fought back with some tremendous play in the second half to go ahead. But then we took our eye off the ball, and it’s hard to stop a slide when it starts.

“It’s a game we should have closed out. It’s not that guys didn’t try hard enough, or that the selection was wrong, or the tactics were wrong. In a game of such magnitude, you have to close out a game like that," he added.