By mid-week, Roscommon manager John Tobin realised that there was no hope of finalising a team until today. He had two players facing suspension and a host of injuries, some of them freakishly unfortunate.

Don Connellan (definitely out) and Alan Nolan (just passed fit) both did the damage in apparently harmless training ground manoeuvres. The groin injury suffered by Ian Daly (still in doubt) had prompted no alarm to start with, but has been slow to heal.

What should have been a routine championship win over New York two weeks ago came at the expense of two injuries and a suspension.

"It's an unfortunate sequence of events," he says without starting a row. He took over a Roscommon team numbed by two years of championship disaster played out in an atmosphere of high expectation.

A positive league run culminated in a lucky break into the semi-finals (after Tyrone had to withdraw because of foot-and-mouth restrictions) and a creditable display against eventual winners Mayo. "For the first 25 minutes against, we played great football," says Tobin, "but two things happened.

"We lost both our wing backs although that wasn't really noticed and the players gradually lost the game-plan. But we came away quite happy that we can compete at a high level."

Tomorrow, however, is the big day. Roscommon face Tobin's own county Galway who defend their Connacht title in his hometown, Tuam. It's a match that has been marked down as a significant championship date since four Connacht counties contested the NFL semi-finals in April. But the scale of Roscommon's absentee difficulties has dampened the fervour.

"The likes of us and other counties with very small populations always have this problem if we pick up injuries," he says. "The reservoir is very shallow, especially compared to Galway and Mayo who at the moment have unreal amounts of talent available. But I don't want to be all doom and gloom about this because we're coming to have a cut at Galway."

Gloom and Galway are interlinked for Roscommon. Three years ago they took the eventual All-Ireland winners to a replay and extra-time.

Misinterpreting this as a sign that they weren't far off an All-Ireland themselves, Roscommon fell heavily to Mayo a year later. A good run in last year's league ended in demoralising defeat by Derry and the summer brought worse as Leitrim edged them out in the last minute.

Tobin had managed Galway a decade previously. Content with club activity and his involvement in the International Rules team, he had declined a few inter-county offers by the time Roscommon decided to look for an outside coach.

"I was thinking that I wouldn't get too many more chances to manage a county team. It was obvious that Galway wouldn't be looking for other management for a while. It was important for me that the approach from Roscommon was unanimous, that there wouldn't be any bad feeling in the county about someone getting passed over.

"And it's very convenient for me, just 40 minutes down the road and it's a county with some good footballers, maybe not a big base but a great passion for the game.

"It took time. In the first league match, we were hockeyed by a second string Galway but things picked up after that. People were saying to me before Christmas, `you won't stay in Division One, Toby' and I said `wait and see'.

"I was apprehensive at first but I ended up very happy with the progress. We got seven points out of eight after Christmas from away games in Offaly, Dublin and Donegal and at home to Kerry."

Under Tobin, Roscommon have been encouraged to play more direct football and, at times, it works very well. In the league semi-final Stephen Lohan (another casualty) gave Mayo's Kevin Cahill, one of the best full backs around, a hard time until the supply dried up and Lohan moved out.

The nagging worry will be how morale may be affected by all the withdrawals. Tobin is philosophical.

"They have great resilience. Roscommon are traditionally hard to beat. Their football isn't always fancy but it's effective."