Tomorrow's Connacht football final rounds off a provincial championship fraught with pitfalls for Galway. Starting early at the end of May with the team's toughest assignment, manager John O'Mahony's task has been to keep the campaign on an even keel in the interim.

A trouble-free win over Leitrim safely accomplished, Galway now face more of a test than anticipated. It's no slight on Sligo, who have twice in recent years taken Galway to a replay, but they have been a high-profile outfit in the past 12 months, exploiting Mayo's lassitude in last year's Connacht final to nearly touch off the champions at the whistle before racking up well-publicised wins over Dublin and Kerry in the League.

Galway would have been ready and known a fair bit about them. In Sligo's place, Roscommon are more of an unknown quantity, although with the small number of counties in the province and the annual FBD league as well as the cross-county catchments of colleges, unknown quantity is probably an overstatement.

Roscommon have the equipment to disturb Galway around the middle. They mightn't be overloaded with silky skills but their physical presence at centrefield and their appetite for breaking ball will present difficulties which Leitrim were unable to muster and Sligo would have been less able to.

Although Roscommon's shooting accuracy has been less than flawless, there have been some reliable displays in attack from the experienced Tommy Grehan and Eddie Lohan. Their defence has been successfully marshalled by Enon Gavin and Clifford McDonald and they will have grown in confidence with the experience of the second match under their belt.

The trouble is that Galway look on a different plane at the moment. With just one major competitive defeat this year, the team has established a rhythm of play and a habit of winning. Whereas the defence could be tighter, there's no reason to suggest that Roscommon can put it under any greater pressure than Mayo two months ago and every reason to believe that at the other end, Galway's forwards will score freely enough to decide the issue.

Galway: M McNamara; T Meehan, G Fahy, T Mannion; R Silke, J Divilly, S De Paor; K Walsh, S O Domhnaill; D Meehan, J Fallon, M Donnellan; D Savage, P Joyce, N Finnegan.

Roscommon: D Thompson; D Gavin, D Donlon, E Gavin; C Heneghan, C McDonald, M Ryan; G Keane, T Ryan; T Grehan, D Connellan, E Lohan; F O'Donnell, N Dineen, L Dowd.