Roscommon GAA Discussion Thread

He did co commentary on a few of Newstalks Ulster champo games. He was very complimentary about the Ulster champo, spoke about how it gets a raw deal from the southern media, is judged unfairly, what great players it has etc etc. It was stuff I never heard him say when he was in charge of Mayo. I couldn't help but think he was putting himself in the shop window for any Ulster teams who may be shopping for a new manager. Who knows...stranger things have happened ! :P

wackokid wrote: »

Rumour doing the rounds in Kerry that if Fitzmaurice slips up again against Cork then yere lad Evans was fancied for the job. I suppose today's result will put a halt to his Kerry gallop now lads?
He was a great man in front of the TV cameras in all fairness.

they can have him,

crusier wrote: »

Chances are he'll manage Galway to an all Ireland title in 5 years time like o Mahoney did!

With what I've seen from Galway in recent years he'd have more chance of doing that with Fermanagh to be honest.

Today was really maddening but it has happened all year,Ros are just so inconsistent.management made some mistakes today and the last 10 minutes were painful
Its hard to know where Ros go from here.Should Evans stay or go,that will be the main question but its a really tough call.Evans did a lot of good and tried to move away from the small county mentality and tried to introduce ambition into the squad but some people have used this to ridicule him.

Its going to be a long 6 months , I have a feeling there will be plenty of upheaval.What started of as a very good year has ended on a very disappointing note.Very strange year to be a Ros supporter .

what was the realistic expectation seen at the start of the year by rosscommon supporters , surly not to win an all ireland , from a neutral point of view i would have been surprised if ye had got to the provincial final and turned over mayo , was there more then john evens in the county with slightly over the odds in terms of expectations

missing a number of key players today surely this result can be forgiving giving the fact that ye will be division 1 next year and huge progress has been made in a short space of time

windy shepard henderson wrote: »

what was the realistic expectation seen at the start of the year by rosscommon supporters , surly not to win an all ireland , from a neutral point of view i would have been surprised if ye had got to the provincial final and turned over mayo , was there more then john evens in the county with slightly over the odds in terms of expectations

missing a number of key players today surely this result can be forgiving giving the fact that ye will be division 1 next year and huge progress has been made in a short space of time

Expectation within the county was to get to the 1/4 finals, be that via winning Connaught or through the qualifers, not unrealistic in my opinion.

In fairness to Evans he never said we would win All Irelands, mentioned if they kept progressing and stay in Div 1 then the players should expect to start challenging for All Irelands.

Hard to forgive today no matter how many players were missing. 5 pts up with 6 mins to play, stupid subs made, taking off Kilbride, crazy stuff.

I'd be surprised if John Evans was removed from his post without offering him the opportunity for his charges to try to make an impression in the division one next spring.With all the underage talent although with the absence of an All Ireland under 21 title the minimum requirement next year for him to retain his position will be a Connaught title.

TBF he's brought 2 successive promotions.He does need to rein in his propensity to enjoy the media limelight.He was most definitely misconstrued re his statement about Roscommon's All Ireland ambitions in the longer term/aiming high....It may have worked against the players by placing an inordinate amount of pressure on same said players or complacency/believing their own press.

He is now been held up to ridicule from I am guessing both inside and outside the county...buses,nonsense re his likelihood of getting an non vacant management position in the Kingdom...hardly credible that he'd be in the running.

AdpRo wrote: »

Expectation within the county was to get to the 1/4 finals, be that via winning Connaught or through the qualifers, not unrealistic in my opinion.

In fairness to Evans he never said we would win All Irelands, mentioned if they kept progressing and stay in Div 1 then the players should expect to start challenging for All Irelands.

Hard to forgive today no matter how many players were missing. 5 pts up with 6 mins to play, stupid subs made, taking off Kilbride, crazy stuff.

yabadabado wrote: »

Realistic expectations was get into Div. 1 and get to Connacht final.Not many would expect us to beat Mayo but have a good showing and go into a qualifier hope for best.
In truth the problems were there to see in Ruislip and then Sligo game was a disaster.

fair points , probably put too much emphasis on the league and lads running out of steam now , but them players missing today would be huge to any team

if you were conducting job interviews and john evens walked in you wouldnt be long showing him the door , his interview with colm Parkinson on newstalk last tuesday would be an example , he can come across a bit on the foolish side but now would be a good time to change things , my example would be tipperarys improvement in championship since peter creadon took over from him

Cosmo Kramer wrote: »

With what I've seen from Galway in recent years he'd have more chance of doing that with Fermanagh to be honest.

Galway have 2 U21 titles in the last 4 years and their Minors just demolished Mayo. Why would you think their young players will be terrible in 5 years time?? Baffling comment

It's actually unreal how bad our midfield was today, and not only today but the championship in general. We basically have an excellent team from 10-15, a shaky defence at best and our midfield is non existent

Sligo beat us due to a combination of losing the midfield battle decisively and our shaky defence allowing them to rack up scores consistently off the possession.

Cavan were way too limited in an attacking sense to punish us for the same thing and were also a man down for half the game.

Fermanagh hit a number of bad wides in the first half, and while we kept the scoreboard ticking we were getting let off the hook a bit. Midfield was by and large a holy show and we didn't win any ball around that area for the entire second half

Inexcusable what happened, the last five minutes basically played out as follows:
1.Fermanagh point
2.Roscommon kick it long and immediately lose possession
3.Fermanagh work it down the field
See step #1

I mean for ****s sake that is unreal, firstly that we couldn't win a single ball in midfield but also that we didn't identify this absolutely blatant problem and just kick it short and work it up the pitch, even just to close out the game. The one time we went short was with seconds to go down a point. Jesus wept.

In all a very very disappointing championship and Evans has done very little to erase questions about bottle. I also think this squad has absolutely no leadership or intelligence. Id also have to call into question the management after this, simply because there were no adjustments made (ie short kickouts in the dying minutes) that would have likely enabled us to see the match out. To be honest Evans made a strong case for his own sacking this championship season and this match in particular

Hulk Hands wrote: »

Galway have 2 U21 titles in the last 4 years and their Minors just demolished Mayo. Why would you think their young players will be terrible in 5 years time??

Mainly because their title winning underage players of 5-10 years ago are 'terrible' (as you put it) now. The problems in Galway are systematic. If underage success was anything to go with Galway they should be challenging for senior honours right now, but they are nowhere near. Winning one match against Mayo at under 18 level means nothing really, sure Mayo won the minor All Ireland two years ago and even that is worth little or nothing at senior level. To try to keep this post somewhere near to being on topic just look at Roscommon's minors of 2006, they should be in the prime of their careers but almost all are nowhere to be seen at senior level - and those lads only needed to break into the god awful Roscommon team of the mid 2000s.

I don't think Galway GAA have any idea how to get back to where they were 15 years ago, they have been left behind by the development of the game. Anyway, it's a discussion for another thread.

Re: Galway, the jury is still out with their young lads. Made a quarter last year with a young team, just beat Armagh and could go on another qualifier run akin to last year.

Back to us though, the main problem isn't really a huge lack of talent akin to the dark days of the mid 2000s, it lies elsewhere, specifically intelligence and bottle. We blew a huge lead against Galway in the league and lost and blew a five point lead in the last 7 minutes of the game yesterday. That's two monumental collapses in one season, along with being eliminated by Sligo and Fermanagh. Absolutely pitiful effort this championship season and one of the most disappointing in memory for Roscommon.

Coaching is a serious question mark, Mc Guinness on Sky picked us apart on how off our approach was against Sligo compared to theirs and yesterday was seriously blatant, we were kicking ball in the dying minutes into an area we were winning at best 20% of the ball, they'd collect, go down the pitch and score. This would be repeated until they led, we probably had about 30 seconds possession total in that spell.

Also, for as long as i can remember, Roscommon have had a serious issue with closing out games, we have an alarming tendency to fade in the dying minutes. It's all mentality and intelligence and possibly fitness as well. These are issues the coaching staff needs to be on top of but it's become endemic throughout the culture of football in this county sadly and sorting it out is a big ask. Genuinely think it would take an upheaval through a very strong coach akin to what McGuinness did at Donegal to bring the belief and toughness back.

Genuinely don't know where we go from here but Evans should be sweating in his seat at the minute, a change in approach and mentality may be needed. Good league manager but Div 1 will be a totally different ballgame and i don't want us to emulate Westmeath's runs in the top tier, there's not much the team will learn from seven hammerings.

megadodge wrote: »

Sprialism, I'm not having a go, because I'm very unhappy about yesterday also and you make plenty of good points, but twice now you've highlighted the kickouts in the last 10 minutes and ask why Roscommon didn't go short. The answer is very obvious - they couldn't!

Fermanagh being down, with time running out went into basketball-style 'full court press', where they just pushed all their players much further up the field to prevent the very short kickouts that Roscommon had used to good effect for a lot of the match. As a result Ros had to kick long and that's where the problems were. Not with the midfield players (jumping) per se, but with those entrusted with winning the BREAKING F*CKING BALL!!!!

I know I've banged on about the breaking ball ad nauseum on here, but yesterday was the perfect example why. For the last 20 minutes of the game Roscommon did not win even ONE breaking ball at midfield. Statistically, that would seem impossible, but it happened. And it was no fluke, because I was at the league game in Brewster last year also and the breaking ball was a disaster that day also until the game was well in the bag.

Something has to be done in relation to coaching player positioning and reading of the breaking ball.

I know Fermanagh were going full court press but there's other ways to make the adjustment, especially when we were struggling. Try a bit of misdirection, bring a player back, take it quickly, go mid range to the halfbacks. We were losing so badly on the long kickouts that going long was simply not an option.

Regarding the breaking ball, fully agree. That and the midfield single handedly cost us the match and the one vs sligo. I recall Jim McGuinness in his analysis of the Sligo match showing how their midfielders and supports positioning is what won them the match, as the breaking ball was continuously won and it was the same thing again yesterday, except even more blatant. Every. Single. Breaking. Ball.

The massively infuriating thing about this season is Westmeath would have awaited. Not only would it be a bit of craic but it would have been a local rivalry game where we could have actually had a bit of hope and it would have been another step in what would be the easiest road to the quarters we could ever be gifted.

Seriously. London and Sligo for a Connacht final with Mayo and we blew it. Cavan, Fermanagh and Westmeath to get to a quarter final date in Croker and we fell at the second hurdle. Shocking.

TCDStudent1 wrote: »

Have they ever met in the championship?

No.Could never happen in the old system as Westmeath never got outta the province and hasn't happened since the qualifier system started.

Hulk Hands wrote: »

Nonsense argument to try to save face after a poor attempt at a dig. Galways 2 best forwards by a distance are 21 and 22. Their midfielders are both 22, while their two best defenders yesterday are 21 and 24. The average age of their best side at the moment is about 24. Footballers hit their prime generally from 26-29. Their underage teams over the past 5 years have been very strong, and their current underage teams are generally good. Galway being terrible over the last 5 years has nothing to do with it, as those players wont be playing in 5 years time. Laughable to call All Ireland winning U21's from 2 years ago, 'terrible'. Youngsters still developing that were good enough to beat the rest of the country only recently. In any case, havent Fermanagh also been terrible? What exactly have Fermanagh done at underage (where theyve also been poor) to make you think they'll be a better side than Galway in 2020? How many of the Fermanagh youngsters would you be familiar with?

Where did I say the under 21 winners from two years ago were terrible? That comment related to your underage teams of 5-10 years ago who should be driving your senior team now. Please don't misquote me and if you want to respond, respond to what I actually posted instead of some amended version of what I've posted that you've created in your head.