There can only have been so many times over the course of the last four months that Roscommon and Monaghan heard the views of the commentariat before they started to get a little annoyed.
“There’s never been a more even, top-quality Division 1.”
“Usually in a season, there would be 1 or 2 games where you’d say, right, that’s where you’ll pick up your points − that’s not the case this year.”
Some variant of that sort of view was repeatedly aired throughout February and March. This may have felt true while it was being said, but given Monaghan’s constant presence in Division One for almost a decade until last year’s relegation, and the yo-yo fortunes of Roscommon, who have avoided getting promoted to or relegated from Division 1 in only one year since 2015, it must have begun to grate.
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After a while, Roscommon and Monaghan must have looked at themselves and thought - ‘you’re talking about us, aren’t you. When you say Division One has never looked stronger, you’re saying it because we’re not there’.
Looked at dispassionately, the commentariat may have had a point. Of the eight teams in Division 1 this year, we had the four most recent All-Ireland winners; Galway and Mayo have lost three of the last four All-Ireland finals, Derry were last year’s league winners, and Donegal are many people’s tip for the All-Ireland this year.
Monaghan reached an All-Ireland semi-final in 2023, and gave a brilliant account of themselves against Dublin before losing by seven. They lost an All-Ireland semi-final to Tyrone in 2018 as well, by a point. They were Ulster champions in 2013 and 2015, but that seems like a while ago now.
Roscommon were provincial champions more recently than that, in 2017 and 2019, but their displays outside Connacht have not reached Monaghan’s standard.
After that second provincial title, they lost to Dublin and Tyrone in the Super 8s, before winning a dead rubber against Cork. They lost to Galway and Mayo in Connacht in the straight knock-out years of 2020 and 2021, lost an All-Ireland preliminary quarter-final to Clare in 2022, and lost to Cork at the same stage in 2023.
Last year offered hope, however. They were beaten by six points by the eventual All-Ireland champions Armagh in a quarter-final proper, but not before they’d gone to Omagh and beaten Tyrone, which was probably their best championship result outside Connacht since 1980.
Speaking to this newspaper in January, one of their most talented young players Daire Cregg laid it on the line as succinctly as you’d like.
Why do Leinster keep signing All Blacks?
“We have a really strong team with Roscommon this year and an excellent management team. We have a really good chance of winning an All-Ireland, and that is the only thing that I am really worried about.
“I suppose there’s a really strong belief this year. We’re in year three with Davy [Burke] and we have a lot of young lads blooded. Listen, every team thinks they can win the All-Ireland. Every team in the top 15 or 16 teams thinks they can win an All-Ireland. We definitely believe it and obviously the new rules open it up for everyone.
“I suppose [look at] Tyrone for an example, we beat them last year, and they are being talked up as big chances for an All-Ireland. Why can’t we be in the same bracket?”
To answer Cregg’s question - the presumption is that gravity will eventually have its way with counties like Roscommon and Monaghan. They are football-mad, but they are two of the seven least-populous counties in Ireland. That is what they are fighting against.
Cregg’s comments betray no lack of belief, but layering on the next bit, and the next bit, and the next bit, to get up to the level of an All-Ireland final is incredibly difficult when it takes so much work just to keep their heads above water when swimming with the big boys.
Looked at from the outside, a couple of provincial titles and hovering in or around Division One for over a decade is over-achievement for both of these counties.
It would be hard for that outside view to not also be the consensus public view within the county too . . . and even, for that matter, in the team dressing-room. That is the enemy within - allowing other people’s expectations of you to set the limits of your ambition.
That underestimation of your capabilities might be frustrating, but it might also be useful for this particular week. Donegal and Galway are probably two of the best three teams in the country. They also really dislike playing Monaghan and Roscommon.
Monaghan are the only team to have defeated Jim McGuinness as Donegal manager in the Ulster championship. Roscommon look on Galway as a bunch of smug, tailored-shorts-wearing dilettantes, and take inordinate joy in taking them down a peg or two.
Monaghan and Roscommon are both far too good to be described as a potential banana-skin - they will both be back in this fatally-weakened Division One next year, after all.
They will ask questions physically of their more vaunted opponents, they’ll wire into them from the start, but they also have a ton of quality up front. If they get their tails up, everyone knows it will soon get uncomfortable for the respective favourites.
The commentariat may not fancy Roscommon and Monaghan’s chances of winning an All-Ireland title, but they can see that much coming at least.
