No excuses for Leitrim manager Karl Foley as Roscommon physicality tells the tale again

If it seems like history repeated itself in Ballinamore last Friday, it probably was because it was as Roscommon, for the second time in ten days, overpowered Leitrim in a Connacht Championship encounter in Pairc Sheain Ui Eslin, this time the Minors suffering a 2-15 to 1-9 defeat, writes John Connolly.

Leitrim manager Karl Foley, himself a Roscommon native, was to the point after the nine point loss: “No excuses this week at all, we might have stayed with them if we got a couple of scores in the first half, we were a little bit wasteful at times and probably didn’t take on enough shots either.

“But all credit to Roscommon, they moved the ball quicker and were a lot slicker in the second half and their forward play was right up there, we couldn’t match it to be fair. I said to the lads at halftime, we needed to come out with a big ten minutes to start the second half but we didn’t get that, Roscommon grew into the game and they just pulled away in the end and we can’t have any excuses at all.”

The Leitrim boss felt his team stayed with the Rossies for long periods before running out of steam somewhat in the final quarter: “Credit to Roscommon, they were stronger in most areas of the field and very clinical. We tried hard, we came out with a plan in the second half but we just didn’t get enough ball and Roscommon kept the scoreboard ticking over from distance and we just didn’t have enough in us to take scores.

“You can’t fault the effort, big scoreline in the end but they were very competitive for three quarters of the game to be honest but once Roscommon got that four or five points ahead, you could see the bite was gone from our boys and there wasn’t very much more we could do. We tried to move things around a bit, change lads and we have a few tired boys out there.”

REPORT: LEITRIM MINORS FALL TO IMPRESSIVE ROSCOMMON ONCE MORE IN BALLINAMORE

The loss of Ruairi O’Rourke, ruled out through injury, hurt Leitrim’s chances: “We went into the game without Ruairi O’Rourke who had been our talisman for the last couple of years and he has been a huge loss, I’m not making any excuses but to have somebody missing of his magnitude - we needed him on the field today and missing him was a big loss.”

Despite that, there were some big performances from the Leitrim players on Friday with Jack Kelly, Daire McCabe and Kyle Russell earning special mention while Foley acknowledged Roscommon’s physical superiority: “I know Jack will be a bit disappointed in himself today, there is a lot more in the tank for him, Jack started off brilliantly, got some good scores. The second half, we needed to get him on the ball more.

“In fairness, Daire McCabe won every ball that came into him, they stuck, he was a class act. We’ve known about Daire the last couple of years, we know what he has, that left foot is as good as you see in the country, not just Connacht. He came of age today, I thought he was absolutely brilliant.

“Kyle Russell was brilliant going up and down the field but Roscommon just had that little bit more. They were able to bring in big units that we didn’t have, had that edge in physicality. I expect them to go on and possibly win the Connacht Championship, themselves and Mayo will battle it out, not disregarding Sligo in any way but they’ll have enough for Sligo.”