O’Donnell: demise of club game tainting Rossies’ record

ROSCOMMON boss Fergal O’Donnell believes a drop in club football standards has contributed to their dreadful record at senior inter-county level in recent seasons.

O’Donnell said: “The biggest problem in Roscommon at the minute is the standard of club football, it is very poor. People might say it is very easy for the county manager to throw that line out there but if you do look at it, the standard of club football has dropped. St Brigid’s looked like they had made the breakthrough but they have fallen away. That is the biggest problem we have.

“In the local championship here, the best player was Francie Grehan and the year before, it was Nigel Dineen. They are players that have played for Roscommon but their inter-county careers are over with two or three years.

“Maybe not enough of our county players are shining in club games and that is what we are hoping to change. The lads have played club championship games after our two games because we feel county players have to be doing it for the clubs as well.”

O’Donnell has also called for his team to play with greater heart in tomorrow’s Connacht SFC decider against Sligo, a quality that have not always display during his two-year tenure in charge.

“We need to be patient and people have said that they are tired of hearing that. But you have to be realistic. We have struggled in my two years, we have not played with a lot of heart and a lot of fight in a lot of games.

“We have faded out of games very easily and that is something that I would be hoping we would play with. We are hoping now, that we will learn and that if things do not start for us well the next day, that someone will say ‘lets get in there and make a fight of it’. That’s the biggest disappointment. There are a lot of teams who get beaten by four or five points, but for us unfortunately we seem to roll over and it goes to 10 or 12 points.

“There is no reason why we should be beaten by that amount in any game.”