Roscommon 1-7 Mayo 1-11
Impressions count, especially when you’re trying to stand up for yourself against your elders and betters. Roscommon came into this as the story of the league but were put in their place in fairly merciless fashion by a physically dominant Mayo side. The four-point margin was tighter than it needed to be from Mayo’s point of view but at no stage did they look even a small bit worried about what the Rossies had to offer.
That could yet matter as the temperature starts to rise ahead of the summer. Roscommon carry the newbies’ curse now of having lost games in a particular way. Four wins from six is nothing to cry about but this defeat and the opening day loss to Monaghan came by way of youth and inexperience and there’s no quick or easy route around either of those. They will go into the championship as a team on the up for sure but when it really comes to it, the big sides will feel they can squeeze them till their pips squeak.
That’s what happened here. Mayo came to the Hyde on the back of an indifferent couple of months but you wouldn’t have known it to watch the way they ground their neighbours to dust. After Maurice Deegan had finished his pitch inspection and given the game its go-ahead, Mayo went and did their warm-up in the wettest, boggiest, most cut-up part of an atrocious pitch. It was as if they were saying – to themselves as much as anyone else – this is a day for grown-ups.
And so it turned out. Roscommon played into a stiff breeze in the first half but even allowing for it, the way Mayo relentlessly penned them into their own half of the pitch was brutal and effective. The two elder O’Shea brothers and Tom Parsons dictated terms in the centre of the pitch and for the opening half-hour Roscommon could get no traction beyond midfield. The only thing keeping them in the game was Mayo’s wayward shooting.
Stats can’t always tell the story but sometimes they do just grand as a place -holder until the story comes along. The wide count at the break was Mayo 9 Roscommon 0. Stephen Rochford’s side took 17 shots in the first half and finished it with six points. Roscommon took five and finished it with four. The only place this was a match was on the scoreboard.
“I’d have liked to be much more ahead but there was no sense of panic,” said Rochford afterwards. “We were doing a lot of things right and we were able to correct the other things at half-time. We were in a position to dictate the terms of the game for a long time but they put on a bit of pressure in the final quarter which we had to deal with.”
In truth, they should have been well out the gap and away by then. Their third-quarter display was everything it needed to be – forceful, emphatic and most of all clinical. Evan Regan slalomed through the mire for a goal that belonged to harder ground and brighter days before landing a phenomenal free from the sideline.
Patrick Durcan came off the bench to add urgency from wing-back and he planted an early point as well. By the 52nd minute, Mayo were 1-10 to 0-4 ahead and the Rossies looked like a training side that wasn’t expecting the A team to be in such cranky form.
Nonetheless, this ended up being a far more interesting game as time ran dead than anyone would have imagined. Roscommon rattled in 1-3 on the spin over the closing quarter-hour, an impressive 1-1 coming from substitute Diarmuid Murtagh.
Having gone two full 20-minute swathes of the game without scoring, they were somehow only 1-7 to 1-10 behind with four minutes left. It took a calming free – won by the man of the match Regan, drilled through the wind with the outside of his boot by the returning Cillian O’Connor – to settle matters.
“In fairness, the lads responded well after going behind,” said Roscommon co-manager Fergal O’Donnell. “The younger lads came through I thought so that was good. We’re disappointed obviously. Conditions were hard and we’re not as strong as Mayo so we were always going to struggle in those conditions. And we did but we didn’t fall away. We made a game of it in the end.”
As for Mayo, their fate is back in the vicinity of their own hands. There’s a chance they can beat Down next week and still be relegated but it’s decidedly remote. They’d have taken that after losing their opening three games.
ROSCOMMON: Geoffrey Claffey; Sean McDermott, Neil Collins, Niall McInerney; Conor Daly, Seán Purcell, David Murray; Ian Kilbride, John McManus; Fintan Cregg (0-1, free), Ciaran Murtagh (0-3, two frees), Conor Devanney (0-2), Niall Kilroy, Enda Smith, Cathal Cregg. Subs: Cathal Compton for Kilbride (43 mins), Seán Mullooly for McManus (55 mins), Diarmuid Murtagh (1-1) for Conor Daly (57 mins), Ronan Daly for Devanney (63 mins), James McDermott for Smith (61 mins).
MAYO: Robbie Hennelly (0-2, two 45s); Brendan Harrison, Ger Cafferkey, Chris Barrett; Lee Keegan, Colm Boyle, Donal Vaughan; Tom Parsons, Seamie O'Shea; Diarmuid O'Connor, Aidan O'Shea, Alan Freeman (0-3, frees); Evan Regan (1-3, two frees), Jason Doherty, Conor O'Shea (0-1). Subs: Patrick Durcan (0-1) for Vaughan (h-t), Stephen Coen for Cafferkey (44 mins), Cillian O'Connor (0-1, free) for Conor O'Shea (52 mins), Alan Dillon for Freeman (bc, 55 mins), David Drake for Diarmuid O'Connor (60 mins), Jason Gibbons for Doherty (65 mins).
Referee: Maurice Deegan (Laois)
