Daire Cregg had a podcast to record on Wednesday. Not about Gaelic football, though. On dairy. After all, it’s probably best not to totally milk a Connacht senior football triumph.
Cregg’s booming two-pointer with four minutes remaining in Dr Hyde Park last Sunday was one of the key scores in a sensational Roscommon comeback as they overturned a six-point deficit to beat Galway by two.
In his day job, Cregg works as a dairy specialist for the Irish Farmers Journal and as part of his remit he contributes to several of their podcast offerings, including Inside Dairy and Farm Tech Talk.
But it is Roscommon’s Connacht final success over Galway that has filled many column inches and sports conversations since Sunday.
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And for a player who turned down a move to play AFL in Australia two years ago, Sunday was the kind of occasion he had hung around to experience with Roscommon.
“The moments afterwards, you have to soak them in,” says Cregg. “You have to embrace those couple of hours. Because you’re playing for yourself, which is obviously important, and you’re playing for your family, but you’re also playing for the wider people of Roscommon, so it’s a privilege to be able to represent all of them. You don’t take that lightly.
“Football is huge in Roscommon and I’ve said it before and I think other people have mentioned it too, but football is really at the top of the conversation list in Roscommon and how the senior teams and minor and under-20 teams are going.
“We just enjoy performing for them I suppose, that’s why there’s a big tradition of football in Roscommon and it’ll stay that way.”
Cregg believes there is a band of brothers quality about the current squad.
“Since I came in in 2023, we’ve never had any d**kheads essentially. We’ve always had really good personalities and really good people and I think that’s a fundamental core of success.
[ Ruthless Roscommon attacked weak points in the Galway systemOpens in new window ]
“And to be fair, every county has that. If you go and meet players from any county, they’re all good people at the back of it all.
“We have the same in Roscommon and it’s an important part of it, without doubt, because you have to enjoy the company of someone that you’re going to war with. And you have to respect them, and that’s what we do.”
Cregg was the third-highest scorer in Division One of the National League this year, but did not start the Connacht decider after missing the semi-final win over Mayo through suspension.
The Boyle club player was sent off in the closing stages of Roscommon’s quarter-final win over New York.
“The first [reaction] was disappointment because it was a bit of a black mark on the trip to New York.
“There was a big crowd of people over there and everything else, but I was conscious straight away that there was a chance I’d miss the Mayo game, so I had a couple of hours of disappointment with that.
“But then you get over it and it’s about training well to make sure that you’re putting yourself in contention for a Connacht final, and that the lads who are playing are seeing that you’re trying to drive it on as well, and that you’re putting a bit of pressure on them and you’re trying to help the group.
“So while it was disappointing it probably helped me to push on a couple of weeks afterwards and make sure that I put myself in a position that I could get an opportunity to play in a Connacht final.
“You don’t want a situation where you’re walking back into a starting 15 or whatever. And that’s definitely not the case with us [because of squad depth]. Obviously I’d love to have been in the last day but when you’re on the bench, you know you’re probably going to get an opportunity to do something or to get a few moments to play. And it’s about taking that chance. I think I did that okay at the weekend. In fairness I think everyone that came on had an impact.”
The manner of Roscommon’s success in Connacht has pushed them towards the Sam Maguire conversation. They face Tyrone next in the first round of the All-Ireland series but could they actually be in the race to win the All-Ireland?
Cregg cautions against such chatter at this stage of the summer, but says the ultimate ambition of every Gaelic footballer is to lift the Sam Maguire.
“Anyone who dreams of playing football or wants to play football wants to win an All-Ireland. They’d be telling you a lie if they didn’t. But that’s a long way away, it’s a faraway goal.
“We’ve Tyrone in two weeks and that’s another special championship day in the Hyde. You get the opportunity to play a Connacht final and then you get the opportunity to go back to the Hyde again and play Tyrone with probably 20,000 people watching.
“You could get carried away by thinking about opportunities to deliver, you could get wrapped up in that and lose a game very quickly and it’s all back to square one again.”
Cregg was speaking at the announcement that Clean Cut Meals is to become the official GAA/GPA ready meals partner in a new three-year deal
