By Cian O’Connell

Roscommon’s Connacht Championship follow a familiar pattern: a flair for the dramatic and a manic post match pitch invasion.

Those two glorious elements provided the backdrop at Dr Hyde Park when Gerry Lohan’s last gasp goal earned Roscommon the 2001 western provincial title.

Trailing by two points, Roscommon were suddenly one ahead when Mayo custodian Peter Burke kicked out the ball. Then the final whistle sounded and at the opposite end of the field Derek Thompson, the great Roscommon goalkeeper and warrior, was trying to make sense of it all.

“I couldn't believe, looking back afterwards and reading reports on it, when we got the goal I thought there was 10 minutes left in the game,” Thompson recalls nearly two decades later. “Just when you are emotionally involved in the game you aren't keeping track of time. Lucky enough we didn't realise it was five or six minutes into injury time.

“For it to come all the way from the backline through to Denis Gavin, Johnny Dunning getting the free, and Denis Gavin putting the final ball in. It was a great way to win it alright.”

Manager John Tobin had forged a connection with the Roscommon players. Something clicked; promise was turned into deliverance.

Tuam native Tobin had worked on Roscommon’s body and minds for a couple of months, the Connacht semi-final win over Galway earlier that summer illustrating what could be achieved.

“I remember that day we met in the Abbey beforehand, John Tobin brought a lot of new tricks to the dressing room,” Thompson explains.

“One of them was that we walked from the Abbey Hotel to the Hyde via the County Home road as we call it. That just let the players sample the atmosphere. He let us walk down. To get the feel of the crowd and the atmosphere around you it meant a little more to you going in.

“As a player you miss that going down in a bus, you don't see or feel any of that atmosphere. We were keen to get out on the field.

“Looking back on videos it was tit for tat, you had great performers and great scores. I remember Brendan Hackett had done some psychological work with us, we just weren't going to give up.

“We were focused, we had left the Hyde on the Saturday evening after a bit of a kick around. We just wanted Sunday to come along. You walked down, felt the atmosphere, you might have been lucky enough to meet friends or neighbours.

“It added a dimension and it took you off the full focus, it let you relax for 15 or 20 minutes of a walk down. It was just nice to get a feel for it, there was a full house so it was important. If you didn't realise it you saw all the people come out for it anyway.”

In Roscommon hope always exists, but Tobin found a way to instil further confidence and belief into a talented collection of players.

Beating Galway at Tuam Stadium in the penultimate round was a critical afternoon according to Thompson, who stressed the value of that daring success.

“Without criticising anybody else he was a fresh face,” Thompson says about Tobin’s involvement. “We had a great year under Gay (Sheerin) in '98, I know '99 was disappointing, but we thought we should have got over the line with Gay. He was a fresh face.

“With all due respect a lot of lads would have heard of John Tobin, they never would have seen him playing or anything like that, wouldn't really known much about him as a player. We'd have heard he was involved with Tuam Stars, when the draw came out that year it was all set up for us to do something in what the Galway boys would like to call the home of football.

“That was a very emotional day, beating Galway in the semi-final. Going into Tuam, coming out with a win. The last time we had been there, '98, that was fresh in our minds, we thought we should have got out on a bad day. We drew that one and had to go back to the Hyde.

“The emotion that I felt after that game was a massive weight off. You just puffed the cheeks out, exhaled because it was a massive relief to get out of Tuam that day with a win.”

Crucially, though, the Roscommon players were completely aware that silverware hadn’t been collected just yet.

“I remember Jimmy Murray, God rest him, was in the dressing room,” Thompson recalls. “We were so focused, but he got up and sang the West is Awake.

“Somebody pointed out that there was nothing, but footballs and water bottles under the table. There was no Nestor Cup yet, we still knew we were only a bit of the way.”

The journey, though, had been going for quite some time. Roscommon wanted to plant the primrose and blue flag on the summit of the Connacht game.

It was aided by the development of emerging players in the county, who dovetailed nicely with the experienced campaigners.

“When you look back at the 70s, 80s, early 90s there was great Roscommon teams,” Thompson admits. “We just wanted to be part of that. I suppose from '98 onwards you had a year or two of bad publicity for a lot of lads, new lads were coming in which helped.

“Frankie Dolan was new on the scene, Johnny Dunning, Conor Connelly, rest him, had made it on to the team and was a great asset. John Hanley had come in, so you had young lads coming in putting their name down on the teamsheet. When you look back on it myself, Mick Ryan, Cliffy (Clifford McDonald), Francie Grehan, who had cemented number 6 that year.

“He had always been played as a forward, but John Tobin had put him back in and found him as a great number 6. Nigel (Dineen) was there for a few years, the two Lohans. A bit of new blood coming in with the experience makes a lot of teams.”

Mayo had claimed the Allianz League title at the end of April, but Roscommon still entered the decider quietly optimistic. “That team got to four Division One League semi-finals, albeit one of them was one year with the foot and mouth when the northern teams were taken out of it,” Thompson replies.

“We were playing ball with the Donegals, Tyrones, and Kerrys. We had beaten Kerry, I think the nucleus of that team beat Dublin in Hyde Park the first year, we had beaten them in Parnell Park on a Saturday night, and if we had beaten them a third year on the trot it would have been the first team in the country, apart from Galway, that had beaten Dublin three times in a row.

“They were still a formidable team back then and always a Division One team. We played all of our football in Division One and reached four semi-finals. We knew we had the potential, we just wanted to get across the line in the Championship.”

When Lohan made the Mayo net dance it terminated a lengthy search for provincial honours as Fergal O’Donnell hoisted the Nestor Cup on home turf.

“It is so long ago now the finer details are forgotten, but it was sweet that year,” Thompson laughs. “I suppose for us that group of lads had been around together and a lot of us narrowly missed out in '98 after a replay against Galway.

“Leitrim caught us on the hop a year later, we always felt we had a title in ourselves. To finally get across the line, to win a Connacht title was great. Looking back there was a 10 year gap from when we won it in '01 so that made it all the sweeter to stop that trend of not winning.”