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Roscommon GAA thread - 1 Like(s)
Declan Bogue.The 42
IT WOULD LEAVE an accountant scratching their head.
How is it that Roscommon remain a force in Gaelic football, living wildly beyond their means among the game's elite?
They head into a Connacht semi-final against Mayo this Sunday in Castlebar (throw-in 4pm) off the back of one of their most impressive league campaigns ever, though even that finished with the ugly tinge of a 4-26 to 2-11 loss to Mayo in the same venue.
That said, who would bet against Roscommon repeating what they did to Mayo in the Easter Sunday Connacht championship in 2023, when they caught the newly-crowned league winners 2-8 to 0-10?
At the top end of Gaelic football, there are two counties that the figures simply should not add up for: Roscommon and Monaghan.
The Roscommon population was 70,259 in the 2022 Census, an 8.4% increase from when it was last taken in 2011. The next most populous county, Cavan, has nearly 82,000, leaving Roscommon more akin to Sligo, Monaghan, Fermanagh, and Carlow - all within 10,000 of each other - before the next big dip to Longford, 31st in the list at 46,751.
You'd want to be careful basing everything on these figures, but it's worth noting that Mayo have a healthy figure of 137,970 themselves.
As we say, it shouldn't work, but by Jove, it does.
Culture
How Roscommon manage it is based on a number of factors. Culture is not just a buzzword that's having a moment right now.
It relates to the people involved, who they have in pivotal positions. It blends then into maximising the low numbers available. It overcomes some glaring shortcomings in infrastructure, and it gets around the lack of obvious football nurseries in schools.
Most evidently, it emerges in a deep love that Roscommon people actually have for their county. If you take a county such as Tyrone, who Roscommon knocked out of the 2024 All-Ireland series, so much of their fanbase has become club-first, then county-focused when they look like doing something.
Roscommon is different. That's why you can hardly stop the likes of Hollywood big shot Chris O'Dowd from yakking on about his days as the minor goalkeeper.
They are football mad in this county," says Padriac Mitchell, the county's head of games development, and a Western Gaels clubman. "It probably helps that we are a largely rural, farming, agricultural based community. That tends to lend itself very well to the GAA."
"We are fairly well-supported all of the time. We don't go to the heights of some of the biggest counties.
There's just a huge passion in this county for Gaelic football. A huge passion for GAA."
The county board feed off that passion and dynamism. Their fundraising abilities are legendary. Across 2018 and 2019, they held a 'Win a house in Dublin' fundraiser that brought in €943,000.
Encouraged by this, in 2020 they raffled off a Ballymore house in London and scooped up €905,000 profit.
Only last January, they had another go at it, selling 80,000 tickets for a home in Athlone and the profit margin was €650,000.
It helps that the county is almost exclusively a monocultural sporting society. There is no rugby club in Roscommon, though that doesn't stop others heading to play for Buccaneers, Creggs and Ballyhaunis.
Roscommon hurling had its moment in the sun and around 30 years ago, might have aspired to be on a par with the likes of Laois and Carlow. In 1976, Tremane were the Connacht club champions, and a year later, Four Roads were the champions, albeit Galway's Kiltomer were suspended by their own county board.
But essentially, hurling in the county isn't as strong as it was, and while there are some well-organised soccer clubs, it doesn't have mass appeal.
Infrastructure
Roscommon do not have a training complex of their own.
At this stage, most counties have them and are constantly updating them. For example, Tyrone are only after fitting an infrared sauna at their premises in Garvaghey in pursuit of the most cutting-edge element of recovery.
Kerry have Currans. Derry have Owenbeg. Donegal have Convoy. The continuing development of Offaly is linked closely with the establishment of their Faithful Fields project.
"Who wouldn't benefit from a training centre?" asks Mitchell.
"If you look at all the competitions - minors, 20s, the seniors in the NFL - it's all played in the worst period of the year for weather, without question.
"We've just the worst winter after another. So a centre of excellence would be welcome but you look at the underage and they have been really, really competitive over the last number of years.
"So we have to maximise what we have and aspire towards the things that we don't have.
Right now, the Roscommon minors were based out of Creggs National School, just over the Galway border.
The senior team rent out the St Brigid's facilities in Kiltoom. The arrangement is said to cost around €30,000 for three months.
While it would be preferable to have a facility like this, it's not completely essential. You only have to look at Armagh and their success while operating out of the modest surroundings of Callan Bridge, although work on a multi-million base in Portadown is underway.
"My biggest fear of not having a centre of excellence is not the senior county teams, it's more the participation side of things," says Mitchell.
"We just don't have the space for the kind of events we would like our kids to have."
Coaching
"I would say we have people who are really into coaching," says Mitchell.
"We have a small number of them, but they are really well-educated coaches who are upskilling themselves all the time, really into it. Really honest fellas.
"And we have had them in the minors and U20 levels, there are a number of them in with the seniors at the moment. I'd say we have tried to maximise what we have."
Other counties have made hay through having - by luck or design - excellent coaching in schools.
It's slightly different in Roscommon, and in Connacht in general. Not since the heyday of St Jarlath's Tuam, a former boarding school, has the Hogan Cup come west.
The last one of their total of 12 came back in 2002; the one before that was 1994 and the one before that again was 1984.
Outside of the Jarlath's triumphs, you have to go back to 1977 when St Colman's College, Claremorris claimed a Hogan Cup for Connacht, and 1957 when it was the turn of St Nathy's in the disputed territory of Ballaghaderreen that it came west.
Connacht schools tend to be lower in numbers than other provinces. Roscommon CBS, immortalised in the Saw Doctors' song 'Broke My Heart' about a pass that never came for an open goal, have under 400 boys attending.
However, they are reigning champions of the Paddy Drummond Cup (B Football) after they beat Patrician High School Carrickmacross in last year's final.
A great deal of their underage talent find themselves just outside of the county, in Athlone, Ballinasloe, Lanesborough and Carrick-on-Shannon. It's estimated that around 50% of pupils don't attend school in Roscommon.
Mitchell refuses to bemoan this fact, instead seeing low numbers as an opportunity that every potential footballer is mapped and gets plenty of action with their clubs.
"We have some excellent clubs, but there are a small number of them. While we have 26 football clubs in the county, we only have 18 minor clubs left with amalgamation and combination teams. It's a small number of clubs," he says.
"But it is a very tight-knit community in Roscommon and there are positives in that. I speak to counterparts of mine in other counties and they do have challenges in the bigger counties. Even though their numbers are greater, there are challenges trying to cover them with support.
"We do put a lot of emphasis on the support that coaches get. Our education programmes are formal and informal. We want to make sure that everybody who is willing to give their time voluntarily into coaching, has that support."
Management
Mark Dowd might be the lowest-profile of any intercounty manager in Ireland. And that suits him perfectly.
He is the perfect example of those who Mitchell says patiently upskill and wait for a chance. Twenty years ago, along with Stephen Bohan, he was a coach of the Roscommon minors, managed by Fergal O'Donnell, who won their first All-Ireland minor title since 1951, beating Kerry in a replay.
O'Donnell, Dowd and Bohan later managed the Roscommon senior team that won the Connacht title in 2010.
Dowd went on to manage the minors from 2011 who won Connacht, the U21s who repeated that feat in 2015, and he was a coach to Anthony Cunningham when they won the senior title in 2019.
As senior manager now, he has his Strokestown colleague John Rogers as a young, hungry coach, and Ian Daly, who managed his club Michael Glaveys to the All-Ireland intermediate club final which they lost to The Moy of Tyrone.
They make concession to outside help in the form of Jason Sherlock, who knows what a successful set-up looks like.
****
Roscommon recognise their shortcomings. They know their limitations. And yet they make it work because they find the right people.
It is an intoxicating mix of people who shun the limelight and are in it for the right reasons.
spion7 (National) - 01/05/2026 12:50:32
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