A POINT GAINED or a point lost?
It was the latter for Davy Burke, despite Roscommon grabbing a draw with Dublin at the death.
“Huge disappointment to be honest,” he told reporters after the 1-11 to 0-14 All-Ireland senior football series Group 3 clash at Croke Park.
“We came with a plan to try and get two points on the board and we didn’t do that, so we’d be very disappointed in there. With five minutes to play we were two points down, so we came out with a point I suppose.”
Donie Smith’s 74th-minute free ultimately secured a draw for the Rossies, but Burke saw it as a missed chance to down the Dubs and end the county’s long wait for a championship victory at Croke Park.
“The Rossies haven’t won here since 1980 in the championship, that’s hanging over them big time. There’s too much quality in that room for that to be hanging over them, and I thought I’d be able to help them with that. But I couldn’t unfortunately.
“There’s big disappointment, you don’t get too many chances to beat top teams here. But we do think we’re improving. Our Connacht form and our Division One form showed that.
“We didn’t really know coming in how forward we were because we had four weeks break and it’s hard to really know where you are. I think we showed that we’re still there, which is very positive.”
Roscommon led by four points at half time (0-9 to 0-5), making their dominance in possession — and numerical advantage when Michael Fitzsimons was shown a black card — count on the scoreboard
“I’m not sure Dublin like other teams controlling the play,” Burke added.
“I think Kildare gave everyone the template there a few weeks ago on how maybe to frustrate them a little bit, and I thought we might be able to take that on another step, and we did for a while. Louth gave us all an exhibition on what not to do here. It worked so far, but ultimately it didn’t work.”
The Rossies face Connacht rivals Sligo next weekend and Burke reports no injuries, just “very sore bodies”. Dublin manager Dessie Farrell, on the other hand, was left with “a couple of heavy knocks” ahead of next Saturday’s meeting with Kildare at Nowlan Park.
David Byrne and Ciarán Kilkenny were forced off with muscle and shoulder injuries respectively, with the medical team “running a battery of tests” post-match.
On the game in general, Farrell reflected: “Immediately you would probably be a little disappointed we didn’t see it out.
“When you take a little time to reflect on it, it was our first Division One team. We knew it was a step up in quality coming. How we were going to respond to that was always the curiosity point for me. We definitely struggled in the first half. We got to grips with it in the second half and presented a different proposition. Overall, I am happy enough. There is a lot for us to learn from that game and bring into the next couple of matches.”
Assessing the bigger picture and the open nature of the championship, he added: “Of course the jury is still out to where we are really at.
“We’ve had two decent performances all year, if we’re being frank about it. Maybe three. Operating in Division 2 doesn’t tell you an awful lot. The Leinster championship is very much a mixed bag, and today and more games like today will tell us where we’re really at, and make the bookies’ job [of picking favourites] a little bit easier, I’d imagine.”
Farrell is hopeful Jack McCaffrey will be back in the mix for next weekend’s clash with the Lilywhites, and also confirmed that goalkeeper Evan Comerford is back training.
