Dowd still stays grounded despite Connacht glory

By Kevin Egan

There’s a peculiar circular paradox going around in Roscommon football at the moment. Supporters of the county are delirious after they won back the Connacht senior title, their first win on home soil since the 2001 side that were honoured at half-time in Sunday’s final against Galway.

The hysteria is only heightened by the fact that they are provincial champions at minor and U-20 level as well, and most readers will have had seen the pictures after the final whistle in Hyde Park on Sunday, or had the scenes from Roscommon town on Sunday night jump into their social media feeds.

That success has stemmed from three local managers heading up three local coaching teams – Mayo native Shane Moran (Roscommon Gaels) over the minors, Cian Smith (Boyle, older brother of current senior player Enda) at the helm of the U-20s, and Mark Dowd of Strokestown, thriving in his first year at the helm of the seniors.

Yet the irony is that Dowd himself is utterly unflappable, never animated on the sideline and always thoughtful and measured in his comments. His assessment of where Roscommon stood at the change of ends in Dr Hyde Park was yet more evidence of this. “I was happy enough with where we were at half time, there was a very strong breeze out there,” he said after his side’s 3-21 to 2-22 win.

“I felt our structure was set up very well. Galway kicked two-pointers in that first half but we did limit them as well, it was a case of sticking to the process and not letting the emotion get ahead of us either.” That structure, based around speed and line breaking ability, has been a central tenet of how Dowd and his selectors have tried to set up their team this year. The decision to select an unchanged team for this final, rather than drafting Daire Cregg back in at the expense of one of the speedsters (Darragh Heneghan, Robert Heneghan, Colm Neary), showed his conviction in this regard. “This backs up what we've been trying to do all year, since the early days when we gathered a panel and started putting plans in place. We wanted a physical team that was able to compete with the top teams and today, we showed that we could.

“We wanted to go down the home straight in games and to still be in it. We could have ended up on the losing side of it as well, but there was massive composure from the lads in those last ten minutes, they just kept their wits about them, took it play by play and got the scores towards the end.”

By securing this win, Roscommon have cemented their status in the eyes of the bookmakers as legitimate contenders for the All-Ireland title, albeit Galway are still a fraction ahead of them in most lists. Once again, Dowd is unsurprised, understanding that this was a step along this team’s journey, but that there was more ground to travel.

“You saw the [Galway] team that started there, who they were bringing on as well. They’ve been in All-Ireland finals, they've been in the semis, we're still trying to get there.

“We're still where we are. No difference if we lost today, we're still two weeks away from an All-Ireland series. We just have something to show for today, and pretty soon it’ll be on to the next one. Tyrone have a head start on us, we’ll have to start thinking about that very soon.”

But some celebrations in the interim, surely? “I think we're going back to Supermac's now for an ice cream,” he responded. Even on one of his best days, Dowd is not one for over-reacting.