Cunningham believes his men will respond to final defeat

By Kevin Egan

The sun was shining, Roscommon’s fervent supporters turned out in great numbers, and when the two teams marched around the full circumference of the Pearse Stadium pitch, giving every supporter a chance to feel the rising noise and the tension, it felt like both Roscommon and Galway would be ready to hit the ground running in last Sunday’s Connacht final.

And for the first ten minutes, that was the case. The first six points of the game were evenly shared, both teams looked sharp going forward, and it looked for all the world that the third provincial final of the weekend would be very different from the first two, that resulted in landslide wins for Dublin and Kerry.

Then Enda Smith blazed his goal chance wide, Shane Walsh showed a touch of real elite class to find the net at the other end, and Galway never really looked back.

“Enda was in hard luck with his chance, then the ball goes down the field and they score their goal, and those are the fine margins really. That defines today’s match,” said Anthony Cunningham afterwards.

“We did tremendously well in the second half to come back, we got it back to a one-score game. I thought the subs did extremely well when they came in, and that’s a plus as well.

“But early on I thought we could have done better and with the breeze in the first half to go in six points down was disappointing really,” he added.

When asked to delve into the reason for his side’s failure to match the Tribesmen early on, he cited the teams lack of zest all across the pitch. “I thought our energy levels were probably down a bit and we probably didn’t attack the game as much as we wanted to, early on in particular,” said Cunningham.

Roscommon’s scoring return was much improved in the second half as they scored considerably more (2-8) than they recorded when playing with the wind at their backs (0-8), but an inability to stop the frequent concession of scores at the other end meant that the home side always had plenty to spare on the scoreboard.

“Like the day in Croke Park, it was going to be high-scoring and we were going to have chances to come back,” he explained.

“(It’s the) concession of scores we’d need to get better at. And we’d need to have that bit more energy and drive in our game, back to that which we had in the league. But Galway are a fine side, they are worthy champions, but for us it’s back to the drawing board. It’s only tweaks.”

One of the aspects that was raised with the former Galway hurler and Galway hurling manager was the impact of the Galway half-back line on the game, and the impetus brought to the field by the surging runs of Dylan McHugh in particular.

“Galway have a lot of aces to do that. But again we’d worked on that. Our attackers have to be able to defend, that’s sport right throughout the world no matter what field game you go through now - whether it’s soccer, rugby, whatever.

“Any team you play now are able to transition to a very strong defensive set-up, particularly when they are up. You just have to be patient and try and break that down, not turn the ball over to them. We work on that day in and day out in our coaching, in all our sessions,” he said.

So, while Galway can wind down with no game on the slate for the next four weeks, Roscommon’s attention will turn to the qualifiers on the weekend of June 11/12, where they will meet one of the Round 1 winners.

Whatever the challenge, Cunningham is happy that his players will be ready.

“It definitely won’t be hard (to lift the players) with the way we finished,” he suggested.

“If we’d thrown in the towel at half-time then most definitely, but they showed great fighting spirit and we’ll be looking forward to the next day.

“We’ve a fantastic chance of getting to an All-Ireland quarter-final, win the next day and we’re up there. That will be difficult but we’re still looking forward to it,” he concluded.