Gacquin: Why Rossies won

LAST Tuesday week, Fergal O’Donnell and his Roscommon players – every one of them – made themselves available for the county’s pre-Connacht final press night in Dr Hyde Park.

No-one was off limits and O’Donnell was the epitome of calm and bonhomie as he joshed with the relatively few national journalists who had opted to make the trip on a wet Tuesday night.

Two nights later and the scene was very different in Sligo where a much larger media posse was kept waiting for almost two hours past the designated time before Kevin Walsh and his men emerged and scattered into the wind.

Only two players were nabbed by the waiting press men whilst everyone else found the sanctuary of their cars and the open road. Given what happened in Castlebar two days ago, the contrast between the two nights is illuminating. At the time, however, it was impossible for most observers to look beyond anything but a Sligo win.

One of the few who was able to envisage the possibility of a different outcome was Jimmy Gacquin. It was, after all, the St Mel’s College teacher who guided Roscommon to an U21 Connacht final victory over Sligo earlier this year – eight years after delivering a rare Leinster minor title to Longford.

He said: “I had been talking to the county secretary last week and I felt the game was teed up perfectly for Roscommon. All the hype was about Sligo, there was no hype about Roscommon. There are five or six of those Roscommon players with minor All-Ireland medals (from 2006) and a few of them had played with the U21s this year when we beat Sligo in the final of the Connacht championship.

“All that brings with it its own desire and attitude and success and I thought that they would have a good chance if they played to their potential because complacency would have been hard to avoid for Sligo. They were so good against Mayo and Galway but, at that level, if you drop your levels by only two or three per cent you are going to be punished and that’s what happened on Sunday.”

Traditionally, Roscommon have never feared Sligo. Indeed, they have got the better of them more often than not and there was further evidence of a possible shock last week for those willing to dig for it. Roscommon had endured an horrendous run of underage results until that All-Ireland success four years ago, but a rich vein of talent has been rolling off the production lines in the seasons since.

The minors have reached the last three provincial finals – without winning any of them, it must be said – but the fact is that the Rossies are no longer the whipping boys. They are consistently competitive now year in, year out.

Sligo haven’t enjoyed anything like the same amount of success at the underage grades but the future is bright in both counties according to John Tobin who knows the lie of the land better than most out west.

As well as being Roscommon manager when they last wore the provincial crown, in 2001, the Galway native is the long-standing and highly-respected Games Manager for the Connacht Council.

“Both counties actually have very good coaching programmes. Seamus Sweeney, the coaching officer, is doing a wonderful job in Roscommon and Liam Óg Gormley is the games manager in Sligo. They are making great progress.

“One crucial point about Roscommon is that Fergal O’Donnell has been there all along, from minor manager in 2006 and now to senior, and he has been able to nurture a lot of those young players on. There is a high attritional rate after minor and a lot of players get lost because of a change of manager or culture or systems or whatever, so Fergal being there has been hugely important for Roscommon.”

Unlike Gacquin, Tobin hadn’t foreseen a Roscommon win but he echoes the belief that pre-match expectation played a major part in the outcome.

Seeing Roscommon and Sligo contest a senior final will have been gratifying for a man whose day job is the betterment of Connacht football but the greatest pleasure was to be derived from the quality of the game itself.

“You would have to say that Roscommon gave a fantastic performance. They played with the same intensity Sligo had in their previous games and there were some fantastic individual performances.

“Michael Finneran was outstanding in midfield and the two wing-forwards, Cathal Cregg and David Keenan were superb as well. The whole team played brilliantly on the day, in fact. It was actually a wonderful match. It was back to the long kicking game and there were fantastic high catches. It was a game to delight the purists.”