‘We're not far off at all’ – insists Roscommon boss
By Kevin Egan
A narrow away defeat to Tyrone and a home draw with Galway might not have been the results that Roscommon hoped to achieve in the first two rounds of the league, but at no stage in either of those games did Davy Burke’s side look like a team that had ground to make up in Division One company.
For the first half of Saturday evening’s game in Croke Park, the same was true – but in the second, Dublin’s class came to the surface, and Roscommon were a distant second best. It was no surprise then that the question was put to Burke after the game, if his team was capable of securing their survival in Division One.
“We're not far off at all,” he replied.
“We're coming together. We have a million and one excuses that I won't bore anyone with but we haven't had our full squad together once all year, for numerous reasons. It's time we need to get in the room and start training hard as a group collectively, then we will get better quickly.
“Remember 12 months ago, lads, we were top of Division One and sure we were brilliant, weren't we? And two Division Two teams beat us and knocked us out of the Championship in May or June or whenever it was. Maybe it mightn't be so bad coming the other way this year.”
When Burke spoke to TG4 just a few minutes after the final whistle, he made reference to not having a full group at training in any one of “65 sessions”. Those remarks duly caught fire online and some pundits referred to the lack of time to gather his thoughts, but with an extra half hour passed before he spoke to the print media, his message remained very consistent.
“For me the biggest thing is the cohesion, the lack of cohesion, we're not gelled in our transition play either way because we haven't trained. At this level, it just doesn't work. And we're dropping deeper into reserves. Dublin would obviously have deeper reserves than a county the size of Roscommon. When we have our best, we're every bit as good as any of them and hopefully we're not far away from that point.”
The disallowing of Daire Cregg’s goal proved to be another sore point, and here too, the Kildare native wasn’t in the mood to equivocate.
“The boys are good on the computers inside there and they have it up, it looks like a blatant goal to me, it hit the Dublin man's hand and went into the back of the net,” was his assessment of the key play.
“In fairness to Seán (Hurson, referee), he's 50 yards from it, he can't see it. But the two umpires are right there. Like, we're in Division 1 and we had a good goal against Tyrone given against us as well. Two umpires again made a decision, didn't give a goal. Two umpires again today, didn't make a decision, didn't give us a goal.”
It was put to Burke that the contact was marginal, and that even if there was a GAA equivalent of VAR, the score mightn’t have been given.
On a night when Hurson issued just one yellow card, Burke’s response to that suggestion was perhaps the hardest hit of the whole evening.
“Hang on, VAR wouldn't overturn it?! It was a goal, why wouldn't they overturn it?” The Dublin hand was the last to touch the ball and the ball went in the net. Where I come from, that's a goal. Obviously up here things are different.”
Two away games, two disputed goals not allowed. Just one more reason why Burke and Roscommon will be glad to get back to Dr Hyde Park this Sunday when they will face Monaghan (1.45pm).