‘Healthy rivalry’ drives both sides on - Ruaidhrí Fallon
By Kevin Egan
From the outside looking in, you’d be forgiven for wondering how this crop of St Brigid’s players keep going. They’ve won county and Connacht titles; they’ve been so close on two occasions to reaching the pinnacle of club football, that starting at the bottom of the mountain again would ruin many club stalwarts, or have them looking longingly at simpler lives in warmer climates.
Yet Ruaidhrí Fallon disagrees, as if it’s no different to getting out of bed in the morning to a new day.
“When we get back down in the summer time, I’ll be honest with you, it doesn’t take much at all to get back up and get on the horse again to hopefully, climb that mountain again and do our best to try and get to the top,” he said, speaking in Kiltoom as the players continued their preparations for Sunday’s county final against Pádraig Pearses (Dr Hyde Park, 2pm).
“Obviously, we’re at a different step on the ladder now. We set out at the start of the year and when we talked the first thing was - I know it’s very much a cliché - but we have to take it game by game. All we set out to do was to try and retain the JJ Fahey Cup. We’d obviously never look past that and strive past that at all, that in itself would drive you on.
“The thoughts are going to be in the back of your head, how am I going to do this again? But it’s easy when you have a group of 30-35 lads that are down here all with the one goal and driving each other on.”
Another factor that helps Fallon and his colleagues is the standard of their club rivals in Roscommon, primarily their opponents on Sunday, who have long-since shaken off their old reputation as nearly men and established themselves as consistent contenders for domestic and provincial honours.
“I think it definitely helps both camps,” Fallon opined. “The rivalry is there between both groups, and it’s very healthy.
“It’s definitely in the back of people’s minds that both sets of teams are driving each other on, even if it’s subconsciously. We both want to play each other, we both want to fight for the county title.
“Obviously, we’ve both found ourselves in the county final again, we’re facing each other again, and there’s that bit of anticipation and excitement and everything around it. I’d say both camps are buzzing and I can’t wait to have a crack at them again, no doubt the lads in Pearses are saying the same,” continued the former Marist College student.
A theme in St Brigid’s performances this year is how explosive and devastating can be for 15 minute spells, even in games where they’ve looked much more human for long stretches.
Against Michael Glaveys, Strokestown a little over a week ago, and to a degree against Roscommon Gaels in the quarter-final, Brigid’s were six out of ten by their standards for maybe 45 minutes and unstoppable for the remainder, surging out of reach in the purplest of patches imaginable. Fallon believes that to come through games like this Sunday’s county final, the key is to reduce the duration of those periods where they are not firing on all cylinders.
“We do understand as well that the opposition team are going to have purple patches throughout the game. We’re just going to try to best weather that storm. Maybe we’re not playing overly well, but we should be able to react on our feet and bring things back to basics during the game; simplify things down, get a high percentage score, get set again.
“If things spiral out of control, they can spiral out of control quickly. We’ve seen over the semi-finals and over the whole Club Championship, if you don’t play well for ten minutes, a team can really punish you, with the way things are with two-pointers and stuff, you can find yourself four, six, eight points down easy enough in a game, and it’s very tough to pull it back at that stage.”
Brigid’s are well and truly back on the horse after an agonising All-Ireland final defeat to Dingle in January. The question is now will they clear the next (higher) fence or will Padraig Pearses be their Becher’s Brook.