Roscommon GAA

Did you prepare the lads for that in terms of the mental aspect of staying with the process and sticking with it?

Yeah, so I think I would say a key turning point, but a lot of learnings resulted from us having a Connacht semi-final loss to Roscommon and following that, you know, we had a huge chunk of time to do physical work like five weeks there with no matches.

I mean, we had challenge matches, but we did an awful lot of work in terms of myself and the team and liaising with management as well.

And a key thing was, you know, how do we show up when the other team gets a run of scores or seems to have momentum what does that actually look like? And in an ideal world, what would we like that to look like? And can we actually identify kind of key behaviors that we can implement again and again and again, regardless of whether the scoreboard is up or down and whether there's 10 minutes left or two minutes left.

But definitely don't think there's a magic formula that I can repeat or anything.

Yeah.

Well, you've mentioned it and you're not the only one to mention it, but the Roscommon game seems to be, I don't want to say it's the reason why he's won, but a lot of effort went in after that.

Yeah.

He returned to his home in Cartron Heights at around 4.30pm. Aidan Moffat had become a familiar figure in Sligo town life.

Originally from Lissacool near Ballahadreen in County Roscommon, he was known as a country man at heart, devoted to horses and Roscommon GAA.

He had his own shares in racehorses over the years and kept a photograph of one of his winners on display.

But he had also built a successful life in Sligo.

And this at a time when travel facilities were non-existent.

When Roscommon played Cavan in an All-Ireland final in the mid-40s, this situation of no cars, no taxis, this maintained then.

But people would say, did they not come by train? There was one train from Roscommon, there was one train from Cavern.

and yet you had crowds up in the 70s.

To get a ticket for that train was like getting a ticket for the match nowadays.

Jimmy Murray of Roscommon.

One particular incident I can recall was a man called Jim Brennan, Lord of Mirtham, he's dead now.

He was on the panel in 1943 and he was dropped off the panel in 1944.

But I cannot wait for...

February 2027, when all of this will start again, we'll have all forgotten and we'll all be getting totally caught up on what new young player is going to start against Roscommon away in round three and why didn't he get the start the next day? We all obviously just gravitate towards our own club players, people we might know.

They're not good

enough.

We do normally get more listeners.

You can see a good spike.

The Roscommon game now, but that was probably half of Roscommon tuning in to hear what we have

to say.

20 in all.

We'll talk football shortly with a focus on Roscommon.

We'll hear from the St. Bridget's manager, Damien Mulligan, and from Tony Smith on what was a cracking match in Roscommon and some of the wider issues in football right now.

But we're going to start with hurling.

Lots to get through there on that front as well.

We're going to skip straight on now to football and reflect on some of the action from last weekend.

A plethora of county finals in football around the country as well.

And we're going to focus on Roscommon where St. Bridget's who were the All-Ireland finalists last season beaten so narrowly by...

Pearce's needed extra time to get over the line in their quarterfinal and their semifinal.

The quality of scoring in these games in Roscommon have been just so high.

James, you've had questions about defending in certain championships around the country as well.

It's

Kilmesson and Meads are champions.

Four Roads and Roscommon.

mark over the road from you four roads beat st dominic's yeah just by a point yeah and it was go on

that game was in craigs when i might not be in there's a game in craigs and i might not be in that game sorry keep going apologies

So there's always big games in Kilkenny.

There's always big interest when those games pop up on TGK or wherever it might be because of the quality that's there.

That is kind of a flick across all of the clubs but like you said it's heating up now and there's just so much you can't keep on top of it all but lots of county finals sorted a few more coming this weekend I think Mayo is probably the big one local to us here and Roscommon next weekend

Yeah, there we go.

And that still felt the case a few months in.

And then after the Ras Common... do a terrible Roscommon performance which is exactly three months before they won the All-Ireland final he just changed it around and now he seems like the perfect bass

did people think that when Andy Morin came into Mayo

I think so yeah

It's an incredibly difficult thing to balance.

We don't have a sack culture in GAA, right? Well, I mean mid-season and different things, right? You tend to finish out your season.

When they lost to Roscommon, that interview, if that was a soccer interview, I'm using the word soccer, if that was a soccer interview, they'd look at him and

go, he's under

Maybe I can't remember.

Roscommon Game.

Oh, there you go.

The first one.

You can have your opinion and you need to be respected or...

Yeah, because

especially after those games like the Roscommon game, you want the anger, you want the frustration, but you also want to know that there's a bit of common sense to the conversation.

Absolutely, yeah.