Roscommon selector Ger Dowd donned the Bainisteoir bib in the absence of suspended manager Kevin McStay for their last Super 8's clash against Dublin and admitted that they have work to do to get up to the pace of the top teams.

Dowd watched on as the Rossies conceded 4-24 to Dublin who cruised to victory in the dead rubber clash at Croke Park last Sunday.

Pointing to how easy the Dublin forwards brushed off the tackles of the Roscommon defence, Dowd told the Roscommon Herald that they had to be more physically imposing at the back.

"You're not going to win games if you're conceding 4-24 or anything like it, so it's a problem we've had, and one we seem to run into against the top teams," said Dowd.

"I think it would be fair to say that we've probably beaten everybody at our level or a little above that, but when it comes to facing the top teams, the Dublins, the Tyrones, we come up a bit short, so that's something we have to address and work on.

"What those top five or six teams in the country have is physical power, pace, at a different level to what we have. That's the question for us, can we do anything about that, how can we improve it, can we make our team better, cane we do something tactically that improves it?

"These are the things we are trying to address, and we have been trying to address it for a number of years through strength and conditioning programmes. We've a great guy in David Joyce doing it, we're very happy with him, but there's more work to be done in all those areas."

Tweet

Most Read Stories