Can Roscommon repeat last year’s ambush of Mayo?

By Kevin Egan

This time last year, the country didn’t see Roscommon’s Easter Sunday ambush of Mayo coming.

Kevin McStay’s side reached and won the Allianz Football League final on the bag of a round robin campaign that saw them drop points only in the final round, while Roscommon’s early promise faded, and it was only a final day walloping of a broken Donegal side that pushed them back up to third in the table.

Fast forward to this week, and no-one sees an ambush coming again. Mayo’s form has been much more patchy and the logistics and exertions involved with travelling to New York always take a toll. But it feels like Roscommon have decided that instead of ‘lurking in the long grass’, they’ve gone all out and let a veritable rainforest sprout up around them. Should they repeat the trick and beat Mayo next Sunday (Dr Hyde Park, 4pm), it will feel like a lost native tribe emerging from the tall trees, one that nobody ever knew existed.

Last year, the Rossies lost three games in the league, by three points, two points and three points respectively. This year, their league campaign finished with three defeats in succession – by six, six and 13. Challenge match form hasn’t been any better, and the absence of both Ciaráin Murtagh and Cian McKeon up front is being sorely felt. Without McKeon’s ability to break through a tackle or Murtagh’s scoring ability and accurate passing range, it feels like Roscommon’s ability to create good scoring chances is not where it was in 2023.

There are positives - Daire Cregg has stepped up his game to a new level, Niall Higgins and Ruaidhrí Fallon have put themselves in the mix for selection with strong league campaigns, and there are plenty more options at midfield now that Ultan Harney and Tadhg O’Rourke are fit to play, with Keith Doyle also in the centerfield pot for Davy Burke this week.

Allowance too must be made for the fact that for a long time now, Roscommon have been a team that has punched above their weight in the league, and to a lesser extent in the championship, only to be all punched out by the time the All-Ireland series came around, in whatever form it existed at the time.

Kildare and Cork last year, Clare in 2022, and many more similar stories before it, illustrate how Roscommon have consistently struggled to find another gear after the turf comes home. In the last 15 years, 13 counties have won provincial titles and 12 of those, and another few along with them, have contested at least one All-Ireland semi-final in the same period. The only one that hasn’t? Roscommon.

It's natural that Davy Burke would have absorbed the mood in the county following the championship exit to Cork last year, and learned that what Roscommon supporters want to see more than anything is for the side to be able to match the acceleration that others seem to be able to find once the All-Ireland series gets underway.

So the ‘glass half-full’ take is that Roscommon haven’t actually gone backwards, they’re just changing focus and looking to deliver their best football later in the year. And it’s entirely possible that even if that’s true, it might not be immediately apparent in Dr. Hyde Park this weekend.

The alternative angle from which to look at things is that of Mayo. One could argue that the early exit out of Connacht worked in their favour last year, since their next game was an away championship win in Killarney. Not too many teams can say that they went to Fitzgerald Stadium and picked up a championship win over the Kingdom, after all.

But one could also say that this is a small sample size, and that their next three games were a narrow win over Louth, a defeat to Cork, and a humbling 12-point reverse against Dublin in Croke Park.

For Mayo, the issue of peaking at the right time is rarely as much of a concern as it is elsewhere. Football in that part of the world runs on emotion, and an ability to create a unique energy and electricity that just picks up momentum out of nowhere. It can come from unique places too, and if that happens in 2024, it’s entirely possible that people will look back at 3,000 Mayo people taking over Times Square in New York as the spark that set it all alight.

In the footballing sense, Kevin McStay has plenty of problems, but plenty of raw material to set about addressing them too. The former St. Brigid’s and Roscommon manager was an advocate of Aidan O’Shea as an inside forward long before he took the helm of his native county and had the chance to put that into practice, but the experiment has had a long time to run now and the results are inconclusive.

Beside him, Tommy Conroy’s form is stone cold and while there’s no doubt that the University of Galway student may yet strike gold and justify his manager’s faith, since his ability to use his pace to create goals out of nothing is a deadly weapon, one has to wonder how long Cillian O’Connor, or even Paul Towey and Aiden Orme, will be okay with hanging back and waiting for anything like the same level of opportunity.

Matthew Ruane is creeping back towards the type of form that Mayo need to see from him while the development of Sam Callinan and Bob Tuohy, not to mention the quality offered by Fergal Boland this year, is undeniable. Paddy Durcan and Eoghan McLaughlin is as good a wing-back duo as you’ll get anywhere and Ryan O’Donoghue is knocking on the door of the “elite tier” of inside forwards, currently occupied by Shane McGuigan, Con O’Callaghan and, of course, David Clifford.

But then, when have Mayo not been able to point to a plethora of players of real quality? For them, it’s an issue of balance, and getting the alchemy right. On that note, the clock is ticking, particularly for O’Shea and Conroy inside, as well as David McBrien at midfield, who doesn’t look quite as comfortable there as he does along the defensive spine.

So, in summary; there are areas of concern dotted across the pitch for both teams, but Roscommon’s issues seem that bit more glaring. Neither team is currently in great form, but while Mayo have been inconsistent, Roscommon have been consistently falling short, relative to their expectations and recent history.

The league encounter between the two teams this year was as one-sided as any game between the counties for some time, and while there are doubts about how deeply either side really wanted to win this game, natural competitive instinct will take over once the ball is thrown in.

If any readers from west of the Shannon can take any optimism out of that in advance of Sunday’s game in Dr. Hyde Park, then fair play. Most, like your writer, will struggle to do so.