Grehan's road has new twist

A renewed faith is filtering slowly through the parishes of Roscommon, leaving veteran forward Tommy Grehan smiling to himself. He knows too well the fickle nature of optimism.

"Well, there is some hope now alright, but this is just a small step. This team turned a corner by beating Sligo, no more," he says from his workplace in Athlone.

Grehan has witnessed first hand the vagaries of the inter-county scene. He has been hoisted towards the clouds after Connacht finals and had felt the yearning emptiness of first-round defeat.

"Everyone wrote us off before the Sligo game. TV programmes, papers, the radio, even some of our own supporters. Sligo were the in-form team and are a fine side. They deserved to be favourites. But sometimes just being dismissed beforehand can get frustrating. We needed that win to get some belief back in ourselves."

Grehan returned to the Roscommon inter-county panel last autumn after ploughing through two years of misery caused by an Achilles injury and hand trouble. Three or four nights a week he made the winding drive from Dublin to train in the early evening drizzle. Playing on National League Sundays, it quickly became apparent what was missing.

"It was as though competing well was nearly good enough for us. We contested a lot of tight games but didn't come away with the results. Cork beat us by two in a match we might have won, we drew with Wicklow in a match that was there for us - we just weren't finishing tight games. And it showed for most of the drawn game against Sligo, when we played with no real conviction."

Although he has worn the Roscommon colours for a decade, Grehan claims to have never witnessed a comeback of the magnitude of that which his team fashioned in Hyde Park.

"I've never seen anything like it. It was just incredible. We made four chances and took two and that was it. Funnily, we had troubled Sligo's full-back line early on with long, direct ball and for some reason we stopped trying that until the end."

When the panel met for training the following Tuesday, he found that survival had breathed a freshness and new vigour into them.

"The fear of losing had left. It was that simple. Some of the older lads like myself and Vinny Glennon, we knew that to win games you have to just shed your fear of what may happen and play above yourself. But that only comes with results. So we had a different attitude facing Sligo the second time."

Grehan nailed 1-2 over the 70 minutes of the replay and Roscommon suddenly found themselves in the last eight of the championship.

Nothing new there for Grehan, who played in All-Ireland semi-finals in 1990 and 1991 before Roscommon were gradually penned back within Connacht by Mayo and Leitrim. "You need to win to sustain success," he says with whispered conviction.

"In 1991, we ran Meath to a point and should have taken them. We felt that was our year. They had lads like Liam Hayes and (Liam) Harnan with All-Ireland medals and youngsters need to see that if underage success is to follow on a continuing level. That may have been the problem with ourselves and Mayo who almost made the breakthrough in recent years. You have to win."

And so to Sunday.

"Well, everyone seems to think it's Galway's year. They are a fine side, play a nice brand of football and seem particularly strong in the middle and at full forward. Naturally, they'll be hot favourites for this. But that does no harm to us. Certainly, we have to play above ourselves to stay the pace but we are capable of doing that," he says.

"There is no reason now why there can't be 15 or 20 counties making a decent challenge in the championship. Almost every county has the 25 players needed to put a panel together. It's really a matter of establishing a tradition of belief. Roscommon have a strong tradition but have struggled for the past while. When I won my first Connacht medal in 1990, it was the first time the county came out of the province in a decade. Sunday is another opportunity for us."