Replying To Drax_the_destroyer:  "It was a clear scheduling advantage for Mayo and I'd agree with GAA_lover that Mayo only winning by 2 points with the rub of the green on their penalty is a bit of surprise. Roscommon losing two good coaches has proved to be bigger loss than expected. Conor Daly,Eddie Nolan,Ciaran Murtagh,Cian McKeon are four big players to be without and can add Ben O'Carroll to that list as he's barely played this year."

Replying To Drax_the_destroyer:  "It was a clear scheduling advantage for Mayo and I'd agree with GAA_lover that Mayo only winning by 2 points with the rub of the green on their penalty is a bit of surprise. Roscommon losing two good coaches has proved to be bigger loss than expected. Conor Daly,Eddie Nolan,Ciaran Murtagh,Cian McKeon are four big players to be without and can add Ben O'Carroll to that list as he's barely played this year."

Replying To Drax_the_destroyer:  "All that and still only lost by two points. Remember the stats for the Connacht final Galway was 2nd best and Mayo should have closed the game out but didn't and the rest is history as they say."

Replying To Drax_the_destroyer:  "All that and still only lost by two points. Remember the stats for the Connacht final Galway was 2nd best and Mayo should have closed the game out but didn't and the rest is history as they say."

Replying To letsgetgoing:  "First of all let me state that Mayo were the best team on the day and fully deserved their win. I am also extremely disappointed that Roscommon did not win the match which I expected them to do.

On mature reflection and having had a little time to review my thoughts, I am not as down in the dumps as a couple of posters on this forum, a couple of whom do not appear to live in the real world. In an open forum everyone is entitled to their opinion but sometimes it must be very demotivational for the players and management to read the somewhat unbalanced negativity from an odd poster

Mayo beat us convincingly in the Hyde in the league and were expected to do so again yesterday. When I checked the bookies odds a couple of minutes ago, Mayo are 16/1 for the All Ireland while Roscommon are 150/1. (Were 200/1 at one stage). Any reasonable supporter of Roscommon (like the bookies) has to take in consideration that we lost four top quality players from last year in Ciaran Murtagh, Cian McKeon, Eddie Nolan and Conor Daly. In addition Ben O' Carroll who was one of our top players last year has been effectively injured all year and Enda Smith has not been himself and may also have been carrying an injury for some time. In addition, Ultan Harney, Keith Doyle and Ronan Daly have all been recently been injured and not back to full speed yet. I know that Mayo was also missing a couple of players but not as much as Roscommon since last year.
As a result it would have been a fantastic victory if Roscommon had managed to put one over on Mayo on Saturday.

There were some positives which seemed to be ignored by some posters;
* Considering the above points we were only beaten by 2 points (not hammered by one of the favourites for the All Ireland.
* We scored 1-15 which is a reasonable score. (Not enough to win obviously).
* We had 10 players who scored, while we only had 3 scorers against Dublin. (The full forward line actually only scored three points from PLAY which includes the mark from Conor Cox).
* The penalty awarded to Mayo by Barry Cassidy should never have been awarded as he obviously took between 8 & 10 steps and O' Donoghue was not actually fouled at all in my opinion.
* The penalty which we received was borderline but we probably should have been awarded a second one for a foot block.
* Young players like McCormack, Higgins and Cregg are playing well and Stack is coming back into some form again.
* We have several very talented players.
* We were the strongest team towards the end. we were 6 points down at 69 minutes but pulled it back to 2 and had a chance to level it at the very end. (Point from Harney)

On the negative side it has to be pointed out that;
* We are conceding too many scores and our our defensive structure is not as good as last year.
* Our kickout strategy is not working as well as last year and we turned over the ball too many times. I was disappointed to see that a couple of turnovers happened when players did not go at full pace to collect a good pass and Mayo players came from several yards back to win the ball.
* We are not winning enough breaking ball in midfield even though we have players in that area.
* Not sure why we do not put one player directly in front of the goal when a long distance free is been taken. No ball came off the post yesterday but it might well have happened. In addition, when Conor Cox took the penalty, no other Roscommon player attacked the ball if is was saved, while about five Mayo defenders did so. This is fairly basic stuff in my opinion.
* We do not mix up our strategy very often. Why for example would we not ask Keith Doyle who must be 6'4" to drift into the square a couple of times to test out Cluxton and Reape in the last two games.
* A few times Conor Carroll could not take a quick kickout as he had to remove a second ball from the field. I posted a few weeks ago that there should be ball boys to do this job. While we had a strong wind in the first half it took about 20 minutes before someone copped on. You would not see this at an under 12 match. (Small point, but small points add up in close games)

I tough Barry Cassidy had a very poor game. He has not given Roscommon anything over the years. Two very poor decisions stand out; 1: the penalty for Mayo, 2: when he did not give Eoin McCormack a clear advantage in the first half. No doubt, mayo supporters will have many complaints also. In would be unfair to say however that Barry Cassidy cost us the game.
I looked at the Saturday game this morning. They showed about 7.5 mins of the actual match and 6 minutes of an interview with Kevin McStay. Some major decisions in the game were not shown (sending off, potential foot block) or not discussed (Ryan O' Donoghue penalty). Would not change the result but poor job overall. Maybe I am biased?

Hopefully Enda's injury is not as bad as it looked as he seemed to be in a lot of pain as he left the pitch. I wish him and Ben well.
Armagh have turned there season around today and hopefully Roscommon can continue to improve as they have done since the league in difficult circumstances. (without winning) The team continue to have my support as they are trying their best in difficult circumstances as outlined above. It is now they need all the support they can get.

The best of luck to Mayo in the championship. (except when you play the Rossies). Your defence played well yesterday and allowed very little space to our attackers who were given limited shooting opportunities.
Ye deserved your win yesterday."

Replying To S1234:  "Ye say we got the 'rub of the green v Rossies' well ye definetly got the rub of the green in connacht final with the ref at the end. Ye cut it close to westmeath is well so wouldn't be getting to carried away."

Replying To endgame:  "Some interesting points in that post. I did in particular also notice Conor Carroll being delayed twice with his kick out by a second ball on the pitch and I agree this was avoidable. However, Roscommon were not well beaten by Mayo in the League in The Hyde. That match , the first of our three clashes with Mayo this year was played in Castlebar. Roscommon have lost players this year but so too have Mayo. Paddy Durcan ( arguably Mayo's most important player) is out for the season and Diarmuid O'Connor is also a huge loss to them. Think also of all the big name retirements in Mayo over the last few years- Keith Higgins, Colm Boyle etc. You quote bookies odds. Mayo have been in an All Ireland finals as recently as 2020 and 2021. We haven't won a championship match in Croke Park for 44 years. The odds tend to be reflective of performance over the last few years as much as of current chances. I haven't heard anybody tip Mayo as serious All Ireland contenders this year and they're not. The ref Cassidy was poor on Sunday but he wasn't the reason we lost the match. I thought Roscommon would learn from the Connacht semi final defeat against Mayo. We didn't . I look at the Roscommon senior football team and I do think we're underachieving,. I know people will post here that we're a small population county but I think we should be doing better. We have an All star and an All star nominee. We have in young Daire Cregg one of the standout players in this year's Sigerson cup competition. We reached the All Ireland U20 Final three years ago with plenty of young talent and have good minor and U20 teams this year. Our club champions, Brigid's , with a young team got to the All Ireland senior club Final this year and were minutes away from winning it. The Roscommon senior football team should be performing better than it is Whatever happens in the Cavan match, it's hard to see Roscommon going anywhere this campaign. We're just not good enough at the moment. You didn't comment in your post on the Manager. With the departures of Mark McHugh and Gerry McGowan after one season, the management of the team is all about Davy Burke and it's not working out unfortunately. He came to Roscommon with very little senior inter county management experience ( Wicklow) and he is not getting the best out of the players available to him. Something needs to change there. Already I'm looking ahead to 2025 because I think this season is just a write off for Roscommon."

Replying To S1234:  "Don't think any rossies felt sorry for us last year when we had a 1 week break after pre quarters to face the dubs.

We were also missing Paddy durcan & diarmuid o Connor 2 key players for us. We had 73% of possession and missed a good few widess due to bad wind and unlucky to get the goal chance in we were bar by far the better team so don't be making exsuces saying we had the luck of the green if rossies had won by 2points it would have been oh great win and no mention of luck."

Replying To dave1988:  "People need to stop making excuses for Saturday nights defeat.. mayo were the better team end of story."

Replying To GreenandRed:  "The 1 weak break before the Dubs beat us out the gate last July had no bearing on the result. Zero. We were schooled on the day.But sure we can add it to the long list of excuses rather than find what went wrong on the day and look to improve on it."

Replying To Drax_the_destroyer:  "Is that directed at me? neutral view point whereby I've already said had Mayo won the Connacht final there could be no complaints as they were the better side for the majority of it. Galway hung in there came with a late rally and earned the win. On Saturday it was 2 points separating the teams at the end and while there was some other debatable calls the 8 to 10 steps wasn't a hard call to make by officials instead of giving a penalty to Mayo.


@ComainRos Has been around the Roscommon panel for while and injury hasn't helped but has Cathal Heneghan established himself at senior county level yet? Conor Daly,Cian McKeon,Ciaran Murtagh,Eddie Nolan and Ben O'Carroll would all be starters if available and you wouldn't have the pick of Galway or Mayo to cover. Mayo without Paddy Durcan as already stated and it was Eoghan McLoughlin that stood in for him and was MOTM, Diarmuid O'Connor missed both Roscommon championship games and got by."

Replying To Gaa_lover:  "If Mayo are to get beaten by a simliar margin in their upcoming round 3 game v Dublin then I might come round to agreeing it zero impact.

As for now I believe last year Mayo playing their 3rd match in as many weeks and against a rested Dublin played a big part in the Mayo 2nd half fade out, yes Dublin probably would have won regardless but not by a margin of 12 points and the contest long over before the final whistle."

Replying To GreenandRed:  "So what? 3 games in as many weeks, the poor creatúrs. Look back on 2016 and 2017 and see how many games we played and how many games counties have to play week on week. Never discussed if a team has a week between games and win both though."

Replying To MayoDan:  "Paddy Durcan and Eoghan McLaughlin are both guaranteed starters when fit. That has been the case since 2020."

Replying To Drax_the_destroyer:  "Open to correct but against New York was the only league or championship game the two started together this year? I remember watching Mayo beat Kerry Fitzgerald Stadium last year by a bit to spare and both Durcan and McLaughlin was used as impact subs than starters that day."

Replying To GreenandRed:  "So what? 3 games in as many weeks, the poor creatúrs. Look back on 2016 and 2017 and see how many games we played and how many games counties have to play week on week. Never discussed if a team has a week between games and win both though."

Replying To Drax_the_destroyer:  "Open to correct but against New York was the only league or championship game the two started together this year? I remember watching Mayo beat Kerry Fitzgerald Stadium last year by a bit to spare and both Durcan and McLaughlin was used as impact subs than starters that day."

Replying To endgame:  "Lads just asking like but is this now the Mayo thread as well as the Roscommon thread."

Replying To endgame:  "Lads just asking like but is this now the Mayo thread as well as the Roscommon thread."