By Cian O'Connell

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Ronan Stack is adamant that the time has arrived for Roscommon to translate underage promise into senior success.

The versatile St Brigid's player is relishing Sunday's trip to Healy Park for an interesting Allianz Football League Division One opener against Tyrone.

Club colleague Senan Kilbride announced his retirement before Christmas and Stack wants Roscommon to deliver at the highest level in 2017. "We are going to miss the guys that we had around," Stack says.

"Senan would be a clubman of mine. He has given a huge amount to Roscommon over the last eight or 10 years. Other guys, Niall Carty, David Keenan, Donie Shine we are going to miss them all.

"There is a lot of guys we have in the panel that have won a lot at underage and it’s time for us all to perform at senior level so we are looking forward to that now."

How important is it for Roscommon to main top flight status in the League? "The aim is to try and stay in Division One of course," Stack admits.

"You want to be challenging yourself against the big teams over the Spring months and prepare yourself as best as you can for Championship.

"That’s what we want to be doing and as a player you want to be playing against the very best so we hope to stay in Division 1 and we will have a right good crack at it in the next coming weeks."

Mickey Harte's Tyrone are first on the agenda for Roscommon. "Tyrone away is going to be a tough assignment we all know that," Stack remarks.

"We have a big week of training ahead of us now, we are going to have to go at it hard on Tuesday and tune ourselves in from now for the Tyrone game. Of course it’s a tough place to go and we know that.

"I have never played up there. Looking forward to playing up there, it’s going to be a challenge, but we are going to have to be ready for it as well."