Roscommon’s Conor Hussey ready to do battle with Mayo again

BELIEF can be a huge factor when the results of football matches are being decided. Last year on a dreary day in Castlebar two early goals gave Roscommon a serious injection of the priceless ingredient and the men in primrose and blue went on to record a famous victory.

Right corner back on that memorable day was Conor Hussey and the Michael Glavey’s clubman is looking forward to another epic encounter with the Mayo men on Sunday.

“Championship is always exciting and playing at home is very special. However, we’re under no illusions about the task facing us. In the league game in Castlebar earlier this season, Mayo showed they’re a top-tier team and we will need to improve an awful lot if we’re going to match them when they come to Hyde Park. We got an eye-opening experience in Castlebar which showed what can happen if we’re not at it. We have the belief and ability to match Mayo on a certain day if we can improve our performance,” he told the assembled media at the recent launch of the Connacht Championship in Bekan.

That belief carried Roscommon to victory in last season’s championship and while Hussey enjoyed the experience he feels there were a number of contributory factors.

“Last year in Castlebar wasn’t ideal from Mayo’s point of view and it probably wasn’t fair either the way the schedule was set up – playing us just a week after the league final.

Indeed, going into the final round of the league we could have made it to the final too if results had gone our way and I remember being very disappointed not to have made it, but that meant we were really up for the game in Castlebar.

“Things really clicked for us that day. The weather wasn’t great. We got two early goals and that gave us massive belief. It probably won’t be like that the next day. We’ll have to play a more open game of football and take Mayo on in order to beat them,” the 29-year-old explained.

Hussey is now well-established on the county team but took some time out along the journey.

“I played Minor and U-21 with Roscommon and after that playing senior wasn’t my main focus. I really focused in on my club career with [Michael] Glavey’s and we had a decent team that got all the way to 2018 All-Ireland Intermediate final in Croke Park. Kevin (McStay) called me into the senior panel then and it just went on from there.

Some players are called in at a young age and miss out on some aspects of life, but I was 23 or 24 when I joined the inter-county set-up and I have no regrets,” he added before being asked about the recent social media treatment of his Roscommon colleague Cathal Heneghan following a clash with Kerry’s Jason Foley.

Hussey hasn’t been on the receiving end of online abuse himself that he is aware of but, as a secondary school teacher, is aware of how influential social media can be.

He said: “I wasn’t actively looking to see what was being said about Cathal but I just know, in a general sense, it can be very hard.

“At the end of the day, we’re amateur players, we play for the love of the game. We play because we enjoy the game. We want to become the best players we can be, represent your county but probably don’t sign up to this side of things.

“Everyone’s entitled to an opinion, everyone has opinions about sport, life, politics, you name it but what kind of bugs me personally - and I haven’t been speaking to Cathal about this at all - but it certainly annoys me where you see the faceless accounts and people saying nasty things but they have no name or they have no face and that’s kind of what would irk me slightly.”

He added: “It can be hard sometimes. Someone said to me before, it’s funny, you’d see some people on Twitter or other social media sites talking nonsense, in the past if those people were in a pub you’d just walk away from them and no one would listen to them but nowadays they have this amplifier and everyone has to see their opinions but it can be tough.

“I suppose I wouldn’t be at the top level of the game in terms of the highest names so I wouldn’t be scrutinised like the higher lads would be but it can be tough.”

Having observed the habits of his students around social media, Hussey believes that it could be a bigger problem for the next generation of inter-county players.