by Daragh Small 

Roscommon manager Kevin McStay says Mayo won't succeed in bullying the Rossies when the sides clash in their All-Ireland quarter-final at Croke Park this weekend.

Roscommon are Connacht champions coming into the game but haven't beaten Mayo in the championship since the provincial decider way back in 2001.

Mayo have been the dominant force in Connacht in recent years but lost their last two Connacht semi-finals against Galway.

Despite being knocked out in the final four in Connacht last year Mayo took Dublin to a replay in the All-Ireland final before losing again. Mayo haven't won an All-Ireland since 1951 but Castlebar native McStay knows they have all of the experience coming into this game.

The former Mayo footballer says they have bullied Roscommon in the bigger games in recent years but that won't happen this time around.

"What are their strengths? Experience is an obvious one," said McStay.

"Even though they struggled for periods in all of their matches this year, particularly in the qualifiers, they were able to somehow work themselves out of it. 

"That is a fantastic sign in a team, beyond that the comradery of the group that has built up over that period of time. 

"Their power is the biggest single challenge. They get to a stage where they just bully us. They almost tease you to kick the ball out to them.

"They have a way of dominating you in the tackle or in the kick-out and that puts pressure on all of us. 

"But we did two years in Division 1 now with the good, the bad and the ugly and we would be much better at riding out that storm."

Roscommon have not won against Mayo in the championship in their last seven attempts and lost 1-19 to 0-14 when the met in the league in February.

Roscommon were subsequently relegated from the top tier but they bounced back to secure their 23rd Connacht title and first since 2010 with a nine-point win over Galway.

That win came on July 9 but Roscommon didn't find out who their opponents would be until last Saturday. McStay was disappointed that he couldn't focus on Mayo for longer but believed they were always the likely opponents. 

"What's a bit unfair about the current system is that we are the champion team and we are the team that's disadvantaged," said McStay. 

"We were scouting three teams, we have people at the different games, tapes were being run through and then late on Saturday night two of them are thrown in the bin essentially.

"Whereas the team we were playing they knew immediately who their opponent was.

"But we have been half-thinking all along that it would probably be Mayo, just the way the stars have aligned. 

"That was probably the team that we were learning towards in terms of our analysis. 

"We had three teams to scout, we don't have those sort of resources so we took on scouting Mayo ourselves and left the other two to another company."

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