After the travails the county has endured in recent years, on and off the field, Roscommon football was due a break. Cue their blue chip minors. Roscommon GAA has ploughed the middle ground between the finishing line and the medal podium for far too long. It seems frustration has been the name of the game way out west for an eternity. But now something which looks very like the elysian fields has appeared not too far away on the horizon and Fergal O'Donnell, boss of the county minor footballers, aims to lead his charges there to check it out with all the energy they can muster. A very-highly rated Kerry team stands in their way from getting a pip into the pantheon of All-Ireland MFC winners. But after all the negative publicity that Roscommon has endured of late, even reaching the All-Ireland MFC decider has a nirvana ring to it for the success-starved GAA folk in the county. "There's a good buzz in the county alright. It's fair to say that everyone has been surprised by the lads' achievement in reaching the final. "There were no huge expectations from this year's squad so it's all been a pleasant surprise for the supporters," Fergal acknowledges. The team-manager himself admits that his think-tank didn't contemplate making the provincial final never mind the All-Ireland decider. "We simply wanted to make the lads competitive. "From the word go, we were impressed by the honesty of the players in that they gave you 100% and they were very easily managed. "They trained hard and always toed the line even when greater demands were placed on their time, especially coming up to exam time. "Whatever sacrifices we asked of them they went along with." Just as well too for upwards of 11 of O'Donnell's regular starting line-up found themselves in the throes of leaving cert exams in June. Fortunately, everyone did their homework with the management team encouraging the leaving cert students in their midst to put in as much schoolwork as possible mid-term rather than having to extend themselves unduly in the run-up to June. Team boss O'Donnell faced the same pressures in 1989 and was thus wise to the balance which needs to be done between exercising the mind and exercising the body in high summer. The former star midfielder 'cum attacker had, after all, joined up with such would-be luminaries as Derek Dougan, Lorcan Dowd and Shane Curran in winning the Connacht minor title in 1989. Losing out to an Anthony Tohill-inspired Derry side in their subsequent semi-final was, understandably, one of the lower points of a lengthy inter-county career which later saw him captain his county to the Connacht SFC title in 2001 and take part in three NFL semi-finals. He hesitates when asked to compare leading his county as a player to a senior provincial title and managing his minor charges also to a Connacht title. He simply says that both achievements are something you dream about. Fergal played club football with his beloved Roscommon Gaels up until last year and has been too busy in the interim to miss being a player just yet. A Garda based in Boyle, he was well enough acquainted with the young talent in the county to have a fair knowledge of the kind of minors he would have at his disposal in 2006. He was happy that five of the 2005 squad that lost out in their first round clash with Mayo would be on hand to lend their experience and football nous to the Class of 2006. Fergal reckoned that his charges would need all the help they could in their bid to secure an extended summer season. "You'd have gotten good odds on a Connacht title win for us at the start of the year. "Even though we got to the provincial final in 2004, losing to Galway, the county didn't perform last year despite having a fair number of survivors on board from the previous year. So there were a few false dawns in recent years." What made him want to succeed Eamon McManus snr. in the hot seat then? "First of all I was nominated and then I felt I wanted to give something back to Roscommon football. "It wasn't with any great expectation of getting to Croke Park, I can tell you. "Galway and Mayo are always strong at minor level but we hoped that we could get together a team that would at least compete against the best around. "Winning our first Connacht title since 1992 has been a great bonus, to say the least." Fergal doesn't take umbrage with the suggestion that his players have been the surprise packets of minor football this past year. Without any success in the Fr. Manning Cup or Webb Cup to their name, the Class of 2006 hardly figured on the radar of most pundits as the season kicked off. One wonders what criteria did he use in selecting his crew. "We didn't start off with any great theory on how to go about putting a winning combination together. "We obviously wanted fellas of a certain standard but most of all we wanted players who were honest and dedicated." Fergal reckons the first inkling he got that he and his selectors were onto something was when the side played Leitrim in the Connacht minor league. "We had been on the receiving end of a few bad beatings, including one against Galway. "The Leitrim game was another tough one because they were on a high after beating Mayo. "But the lads showed a lot of guts, gave us 100% for the full hour and won by 12 points to 9 despite having a man sent off. "There was a lot of character in that performance." Soon, Fergal and his think-tank realised that there was really nothing much separating all five teams in Connacht. He did fancy Galway though and he knew only a mighty performance from Roscommon in Hyde Park would prevent the Tribesboys securing their anticipated victory. As things panned out, the raging hot underdogs clinched a thrilling victory by five points, albeit with the help of a somewhat fortuitous goal. "That win (over Galway) was important because it guaranteed us at least another two matches in the championship. "For us the worst case scenario would have been a quarter-final place which would have kept us involved," Fergal explains. The final against firm favourites Mayo would prove yet another stern test of Roscommon's mettle. The would-be champions played some of their sweetest football in the first half but still went in at the break with just a single point lead. Mayo upped the ante in a big way immediately after the interval, scoring within seconds of the throw-in and really and truly throwing the gauntlet down to the match outsiders. "The lads again showed a lot of ambition and determination to weather the storm in the early part of the second half against Mayo and go three points up. "They kept coming back at us but we managed to keep our cushioned lead to make it through," Fergal reflects. Winner of five Roscommon SFC medals (1994, 98, 99, 2001, 2004), Fergal says the confidence levels soared in the squad following their provincial success. He maintains that there was no difficulty though, despite all the publicity that swelled around them thereafter, in keeping the Ros lads' feet on terra firma. Still the proverbial banana skin awaited in the All-Ireland quarter-final in the shape of fellow surprise packets Tipperary, conquerors of Cork in the Munster championship. The match in Tullamore proved, once and for all, that Roscommon had landed. A strong finish after a somewhat pressurised first half resulted in a non-too flattering eight points win. The fact that it gained scant recognition countrywide didn't bother Fergal one iota. "We were glad to be back with the underdogs' tag for the semi-final against Meath. "They were justifiably the favourites because they had some really quality players in their ranks, fellas who had distuinguished themselves with St. Pat's, Navan. "They had been through a longer campaign than we had and had won the Leinster league and championship which was a sign of how good they were." But Ros didn't so much as run riot as master Meath in controlled, almost studied fashion. On the day Mayo shook the football world by beating Dublin in their All-Ireland SFC semi-final clash, the Connacht champions' 1-10 to 0-9 victory on the undercard of Croke Park's double bill made it a knock-out blow for the West's footballing ambassadors. In the days ahead, Connacht's finest senior team this year and their minor counterparts will attempt to do the double over Kerry. Both Mickey Moran's men and Fergal O'Donnell's boys will go in to their respective deciders as underdogs. So what's new. "We know what we're up against but we'll give it our best shot. "They have some fantastic players, like young Curran, Walsh and Moran but our lads will put in another hard shift and we'll see where it takes us." To unthinkable pastures perhaps? Only God knows at this point and therein lies the beauty of sport. Tweet

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