By Michael Devlin

Saturday’s heavy defeat to Tyrone was a sobering affair for Kevin McStay and his Roscommon charges, and after the game he hinted that a debate will have to take place over their style of play going forward.

Roscommon will ply their trade in Division One of the Allianz League again next year, but McStay believes their open brand of football simply won’t cut it against the top teams in the country, and that a change of approach may be required.

“That’s a debate that we’re going to have to have going into the early part of the winter, because that’s the way we play, which is easy to play against,” McStay told reporters after Saturday’s 18 point defeat in the first round of the All-Ireland Quarter Final group stage.

“It’s a type of football, I’m not sure if Roscommon supporters will go and watch if we change our style dramatically, start looking at a Galway model or something like that.

“Whether our supporters or our players would want that type of game, that’s a discussion we need to have because we’ve had to years of trying to develop ourselves and get out of the lower division and get into Division One, trying to get a title on the day and thankfully we did.

“But now, going into the next level, that elite level perhaps, is going to take some big strategic decisions in style and personnel. That’s what a day like this does to you, you have to stop and say to yourself ‘this isn’t good enough’.

“We’re not able to compete against Tyrone, and in two weeks we are back here against the ultimate kingpins [Dublin], and that’s fairly daunting. So the match next weekend [against Donegal] is really paramount for us to react to it.

“We’re not eejits, we know the style of play that beat Armagh, it’s lovely to watch and it’s grand, but the hard-nosed analysts and managers will say that won’t stack up when the real gravy starts being divvied up. We’d know that, but we have to see if we are the type of player physically and athletically to change the style of our game.

“They’re all big questions and they’re not going to be answered in the next two or three weeks. It’s a question we have to ask ourselves and answer.”

Roscommon’s attacking style has earned them many plaudits in recent seasons, particularly in how they went toe-to-toe with Cavan in the Division Two Final in a game that yielded eight goals overall.

McStay, though, acknowledged a more pragmatic and realistic approach may be required to avoid more double-figure defeats at the hands of the leading teams in the country, even if that is to the detriment of the spectacle of the game.

“Of course [style matters to me], but of course results are more important, unfortunately that’s the world we live in. I’m not judged by style, I’m judged by results. The style of play is a big debate currently.

“There was patches of the game that were so hard to watch, three or four minutes where the life has been sucked out of the game, hand-passing over and back. It’s not a style that I particularly like, but you have to be a realist as well, you have to give your team the best chance of winning the games.

“We got lucky last week in a sense that Armagh said ‘right let’s have a game here’, and we both had a shot at it. The majority of teams won’t engage in that.”