“There’s probably a narrative that had developed around this game that it was going to be Dublin at a canter or whatever,” said Farrell. “We definitely weren’t expecting that. We knew that Roscommon had five weeks to prepare for this game, that’s a long time planning and prepping for one opposition, for one opponent.
“So we knew they were going to come with all guns blazing, they’re very organised, well drilled and stuck to their game plan very, very well. We anticipated it was going to be the back end of this game when it was going to be won.”
O’Callaghan took over as captain in the absence of James McCarthy, who didn’t make the match day squad due to injury.
“James picked up an injury the last day, the Louth game, so he’s had a rough time of it with injuries over the season,” Farrell explained. “I think a lesser man would have given up at this stage of his career but he is working hard on his rehab and recovery and we hope to see him before the end of the qualifiers.”
There was also a fresh concern when Cian Murphy went off near the end, but Farrell said it was too soon to assess the nature of the injury.
He confirmed that goalkeeper Evan Comerford’s season is over after he suffered a cruciate injury a couple of weeks ago.
The loss reduces his goalkeeping options, with David O’Hanlon now sole cover for Stephen Cluxton. “From one week you’re trying to figure out the pecking order, it’s so competitive, and then one of the lads is taken out and if another fella gets an injury, touch wood it won’t happen, but that’s how fickle it can be. You could be presented with a different type of a headache all of a sudden. Hopefully the two lads stay healthy and there’s good healthy competition between the two of them.
“(Evan) had a bad run of it over the last couple of seasons but hopefully he’s had his fair share now and he’ll get a clean run of it for a couple of seasons.”
The Dublin finishing kick was helped by a serious impetus coming from the bench, as Farrell acknowledged.
“It definitely did. You’d a bit of energy, a bit of pace and a bit of experience combined. As mentioned earlier we sort of anticipated that they were going to be very difficult to break down and this game would still be in the melting pot coming into the last quarter so that’s when you needed that type of a combination of subs coming in.
“Some fellas are better suited to the game when it opens up rather than playing against a team that are in lock-down. So it’s horses for courses. That was the group we ran with this week, next week it could be a little bit different.”
He wasn’t distracted by the small sized crowd. “To be honest we were so focused on the job at hand we knew Roscommon was going to be a really tough game so I wasn’t paying any attention to what was going on around me. It’s obviously a disappointing crowd. There’s obviously a lot of different sports, and activity, on today. But yeah look it, it is what it is as they say.”
