Roscommon soul-searching as Tyrone put on the squeeze

Tyrone 4-24 Roscommon 2-12

[team1]Tyrone [/team1][score1]4-24[/score1][team2]Roscommon [/team2][score2]2-12[/score2][/score]

By Paul Keane

The lights went out on Kevin McStay’s post-match press conference at Croke Park on Saturday, forcing the Roscommon manager to perform his duties in near darkness.

As a metaphor for what’s coming his and Roscommon’s way this winter, it just about nailed it as major change is in the pipeline and all concerned will be fumbling in the dark for a period.

Beaten out the Croke Park gates for the second time in under a year the Roscommon manager conceded their attractive, offensive style is outdated and has to be replaced.

“Unfortunately this is the world we live in, I’m not judged by style, I’m judged by results,” said McStay.

He said they only beat Armagh to make the Super 8s as Kieran McGeeney similarly said, “Right, let’s have a game here”, but noted that “the majority of teams won’t engage” on those terms anymore.

Tyrone played to their counter-attacking strengths and punished Roscommon on the break constantly, picking off points from all angles, with 13 different scorers.

It leaves Tyrone perfectly poised to play Dublin in Omagh next Saturday evening, the most eagerly awaited game of the year so far, though Roscommon’s race may already be run with intimidating ties against Donegal and Dublin to come.

According to McStay, the bigger picture, with Division 1 football in mind in 2019, is coming up with a system that will prevent these sorts of humiliating defeats.

“That’s a debate we’re going to have to have going into the early part of winter,” said McStay. “ Because that’s the way we play, but it’s easy to play against. [Defensive football] is a type of football that I’m not sure the Roscommon supporters would go and watch, if we changed our style dramatically and if we started looked at a Galway model, or something like that.

“I don’t know whether our supporters would want that, or whether our players would want that type of a game. That’s a discussion we’re going to have to have because we’re two years trying to develop ourselves, trying to get out of the lower division in Division 1, and trying to get a title along the way, which thankfully we did, but now going into the next level, that elite level, it’s going to take some big strategic decisions in style and personnel, etc, etc.

“That’s what a day like this does to you. You have to stop and say, ‘This isn’t good enough, we’re not able to compete with a Tyrone’. In a few weeks’ time we’re going to be back at Croke Park for the ultimate kingpins (Dublin), so that’s fairly daunting.”

Roscommon lived with Tyrone for 20 minutes or so. They trailed 1-4 to 0-6 at that stage, and briefly rallied early in the second half, reducing the arrears to four points. But they were wiped out having come face to face with the reality of championship football.

“There were patches of the game that were so hard to watch, there were three or four-minute spells where the life is just being sucked out of the game (by Tyrone), hand passing over and back and across,” said McStay.

“It’s not a style I particularly like but you have to be a realist as well. I have to give my teams the best chance of winning the games. We got lucky last weekend that Armagh said, ‘Right, let’s have a game here’ and we both had a shot at it. But the majority of teams won’t engage in that.”

In what amounted to a warning to Dublin ahead of Saturday’s game in Omagh, McStay said the Red Hands have mastered the blanket defence strategy.

“They’re the fastest team to reconfigure, very, very fast. We would have thought all week, ‘We’ll move the ball fast and we’ll get through them before they reset’. With lads like Compton and Smith, we thought we’d get a lot of primary possession and we got a reasonable amount but Jaysus, their half-forwards are back like bullets, and they can keep doing it because of their conditioning. We found it very hard. You look up and you see 10 fellas in front of you and you’re a half-forward soloing the ball, you’re going to pull the handbrake fairly lively when you see that amount of jerseys in front of you.”

McStay conceded his players’ basic effort wasn’t good enough, saying they didn’t match Tyrone’s willingness to do the ‘donkey work’.

He said there was a huge gap in the physical conditioning of the teams also.

“They’re at elite level conditioning and we’re not,” he said. “There’s four or five powerful runners coming hard all the time; Harte, Donnelly, these fellas pouring forward, Colm Cavanagh at times, they’re strong, strong runners. That’s just a level we’re not at yet but we’d hope to get there. Then the natural athleticism of some of their players, Tyrone have a lot of those compared to us. Once you go behind against Tyrone, it’s a difficult place to be.”

Scorers for Tyrone: R. Donnelly (1-4); P. Harte (1-3, 1 pen, 3 frees); N. Sludden (1-2); C. Meyler (1-1); C. McAliskey (0-4, 3 frees); C. McShane and M. Bradley (0-2 each); T. McCann, C. Meyler, M. McKernan, R. McNamee, D. McClure, M. Donnelly and R. Brennan (0-1 each).

Scorers for Roscommon: C. Murtagh (1-3, 2 frees); D. Murtagh (0-5, 3 frees); E. Smith (1-0); F. Cregg, C. Devaney, P. Kelly and C. Daly (0-1 each)

TYRONE: N. Morgan; M. McKernan, R. McNamee, C. McCarron; T. McCann, M. Donnelly (c), F. Burns; C. Cavanagh, P. Hampsey; P. Harte, N. Sludden, C. Meyler; C. McShane, R. Donnelly, C. McAliskey.

Subs: H.P. McGeary for McCarron (19); K. McGeary for Meyler (50); D. McClure for Cavanagh (51); M. Bradley for McAliskey (55); R. Brennan 0-1 for McKernan (58); R. O’Neill for Sludden (59).

ROSCOMMON: C. Lavin; D. Murray, N. McInerney, N. Daly; J. McManus, C. Devaney (c), Fintan Cregg; T. O’Rourke, E. Smith; C. Murtagh, C. Compton, N. Kilroy; D. Murtagh, C. Cregg, D. Smith.

Subs: B. Stack for C. Cregg and Finbarr Cregg for D. Smith (h/t); G. Patterson for Daly (46); C. Daly for Fintan Cregg (53); S. Killoran for C Murtagh (62); P. Kelly for E Smith (65).

Ref: D. Gough (Meath).

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