Sligo got their Connacht League campaign off to a winning start when they beat Roscommon by five points at Markievicz Park yesterday, with half forward Paul Taylor scoring seven points of his side's total.

Sligo made all of the early running and were six points up before Roscommon opened their account with a point from Don Connellan in the 21st minute.

Although they were outplayed for long stretches of the opening half, Roscommon gave themselves a glimmer of hope when Nigel Dineen got through for a goal two minutes before the interval to leave the half time score 0-7 to 1-2 in Sligo's favour.

Sligo made a positive start to the second half and had four points in quick succession, three of them from Taylor, to build up a commanding advantage.

The introduction of substitutes Luke Dolan and Tommy Grehan injected some urgency into the Roscommon attack. The visitors applied a lot of pressure in the closing stages, but Sligo always had too much in hand