GALWAY V ROSCOMMON:MATTIE CLANCY came hurrying around the corner with his man-of-the-match silverware and came to a fast halt as he found his path blocked by Michael Ryan facing into his first championship post-match conference.

The Galway flier backed away and stood in the corner while the young Roscommon manager reflected on a bleak day for his native county.

After the dramatic days of upheaval in Roscommon football, Ryan was brave enough to take on a team containing men he had played alongside and managed at under-21 level and he had precious little time to get them ready for what proved to be a daunting challenge against Galway. But he looked far from broken as he talked about how it felt to chalk up the first negative of his senior managerial career.

"The sending-off changed the game after all. I am not overly disappointed - I had a good 20 minutes on the sideline where the result was probably inevitable so I had a lot of time to think about it. I was under no illusions as regards the task I had. I knew the confidence of the team was fragile and if we had a few lucky breaks we could have pushed on a bit but once Galway got on top, you could see the heads drop. That is a symptom of the league they had.

"But we have nine weeks now to prepare for the next game. I felt some of our young players did well, Senan (Kilbride) was dangerous when we got ball into them and I thought we did quite well at midfield. I do feel we can still do quite well. You see a lot of teams zone in on the championship and when they lose that one match, their season collapses. That is not going to happen with these guys."

Liam Sammon is an old hand at the sporting post-mortems. His Galway team never fully caught fire but they didn't cause him a great deal of stress. In the end, he professed himself reasonably happy and was surprised it ended on such a handsome score.

"I thought it was crazy what the bookies were giving," he admitted. "I couldn't see where they were coming from. But the bookies don't lose money. I thought we were fortunate we got goals at the right time, while they were unfortunate not to get at least one in that first half which they were possibly entitled to.

"Leitrim? I have to think about that one. We will look forward to it and plan it and see how it goes. Championship - it is just a two-horse race on any day."