We can have no complaints, admits Roscommon boss Kevin McStay

Kevin McStay stood stoically through most of it. As goal followed point and point followed goal, Roscommon’s manager remained more or less motionless on the sideline, taking in the deteriorating scene with a serenity that belied the mayhem unfolding around him.

The only expression of real angst followed Kevin McLoughlin’s goal. Roscommon had just found their feet with a pair of points to answer Mayo’s five openers, when McLoughlin found the net with a mazy run that included a double hop of the ball.

“I was screaming at the linesman and I was a good bit away from the play, but that’s a small thing,” said McStay. “Momentum is a big thing around here and after that they were looking for goals every second chance they got.

“They were looking to kill it off. We can have no complaints and if they continue to play like that they’ll test their next opponent.”

It was, he acknowledged, a Mayo performance that will be filtered through the light of Roscommon’s own shortcomings but McStay’s former existence as an RTÉ pundit demanded that he be asked to sum up the lay of the land ahead of the two semi-finals.

“It’s hard to judge any of the four, because the opposition all four encountered just didn’t pass muster really, did they? If I was looking at it, Tyrone are going to give Dublin a lot of it and Mayo are going to give Kerry plenty of it. So I’d say it’s wide open; that would be my view.

“If Dublin play to their potential and their form, they’re the number one team, but they’ll have a lot of football played when they have Tyrone beat, would be my summation and, similarly, Kerry will have a lot of football played, if Mayo carry that form together.”

Roscommon’s season has been book-ended by low ebbs, but it provided an unexpected high point with the nine-point Connacht final defeat of Galway in midsummer and McStay was keen to pay heed to that as the debrief began.

“You do recall where we were?” he said in relation to a spring of trimmings in Division One and the loss of key players during the off- season that preceded that. “They have done remarkably well to get provincial medals out of it.”