Burke: The Roscommon players needed that result

Davy Burke and Enda Smith hailed a hugely satisfying victory as Roscommon shocked Tyrone in Omagh to eliminate the 2021 All-Ireland champions and book their own spot in next weekend’s quarter-final.

Roscommon had only won one game from 10 in 2024 prior to last Saturday’s season saving win over Cavan in Pearse Park, but they powered into a six-point lead at the interval against Tyrone.

While Brian Dooher’s side rallied after the break, Roscommon scrapped hard to keep the lead throughout, Diarmuid Murtagh and Daire Cregg, in particular, landing big scores at crucial moments to maintain their advantage.

For Roscommon manager Burke, it was a much needed win, though he stressed they’d been playing decent football for much of the summer, despite the mostly negative results.

“It’s huge. They’re (the players) playing for Roscommon a long, long time and they needed a result like today,” Burke said.

“They needed to go out and do that and perform and beat a top team and that’s what they’ve done today.

“I thought it was a good performance, it was fairly controlled from minute one to minute 70-odd, so yeah it was a nice one.

“Anytime Tyrone got back to (within) two or three or whatever it was, we always got one and I felt it was hopefully going to be enough.

“We played them here in the National League in the first round and we watched Tyrone’s forwards kick points for fun in and around the ‘D’.

“One thing we said we wouldn’t leave here today was (to) let that happen and I’m delighted (the players) showed that.”

“It’s one team, now we’ve Kerry, Donegal or Armagh I think are our three potential opposition next weekend and we’ll get nothing easy there.

“But we’ll go to Croke Park full of confidence, two wins in a row having lost a number of games in a row.

“But we were playing a very high level of football for a long time and I think that went a little bit under the radar the level of football we were playing.”

While the forwards, Murtagh and Cregg, took much of the credit, Burke was quick to commend the defensive display, particularly when they came under pressure in the second half.

“We’ve lovely forwards and isn’t it a great thing today that we’ve lovely forwards combined with a nice defensive plan,” he said.

“Because it’s easy to have lovely forwards but when we close down the ‘D’ as well, it was a lovely plan and fair play to the boys.

“David Murray is every bit as important as Daire Cregg to me anyway.”

For All-Star midfielder Enda Smith, it was one of the sweetest and most satisfying wins of his career, taking a scalp against a leading Ulster team on the road.

“We’ve been lucky enough to win a couple of Connacht titles but to come up and beat a team as good as Tyrone away from home, this team probably hasn’t done that – beating one of the top teams – so to go and do that with the performance that we gave, it’s very satisfying,” he said.

“Today is only our third win of the year. (The criticism) was fair enough. We as players probably hadn’t done enough in those games but look, it was great.

“That first half really set the tone and laid the foundations for the whole game and it was heart in the mouth probably at times in the second half but we held on and it was a very satisfying victory.”