Finneran lauds Westmeath ladies for their resilience

In the lead up to last Sunday’s Lidl Ladies’ NFL Division 1A match against Donegal, Westmeath manager Michael Finneran admitted that his group’s opening round league clash with Mayo was very much a fact-finding mission, where he let his players play a natural, one-on-one style game in order to assess them as individuals.

Having shipped a very heavy defeat in the Connacht Air Dome in that game, the big Roscommon native needed to see improvement against Donegal and he certainly got it, particularly defensively where Westmeath played quite well for most of the game, albeit against a Donegal attack that was shorn of its deadliest weapon in the shape of Geraldine McLaughlin.

“You’re looking for an improvement and even looking at the scoreboard, anyone could see that we delivered that,” he said after the game.

“We’re quite stretched at the moment, we picked up another couple of injuries during the week so we’re down another couple of players on top of what we were missing coming into the first game.

“So to show an improvement like that in the space of a week is massive, and their attitude, which you saw on the pitch, was just outstanding out there. I said to them there, we’ve definitely something to work with. A few more tweaks and a few better decisions on the ball and we really get ourselves into that game, and who knows, then maybe we can push on towards beating one of these top teams”.

Conceding 7-22 against Mayo was a tough experience for the group, and when Karen Guthrie rattled in two early games in this fixture, he feared that a similar landslide might be in store.

“I would have thought that it would be hard to keep confidence and morale up, but these girls have such resilience in them,” he responded.

“Even on top of those blows, on Friday night a top player for us, Lucy McCartan, gets a bad injury and that’s really demoralising for the group coming into the game. But no, they stuck at, they refocused, they brought a great attitude out there today. Then the goals go in and was there any heads going down out there? No, they stuck to the task, kept trying, and anyone supporting Westmeath football, or any county team, all you’re looking for is a team that gives their all, and Westmeath supporters are seeing that."

Yet shortly after at the second-half water break, after Anna Jones crashed in her spectacular goal, there was a sense that the small handful of Westmeath supporters who braved the St Loman’s grounds might have seen even more. Certainly ,Finneran felt that his players put themselves within striking distance of result.

“Yeah, that’s what’s feeding most into the feeling of disappointment at the end of it. There was a feeling that there was a score there for us. Now we were playing into the wind but we were moving the ball in transition quite well, and we were getting up to their 45 quite well, but we ran down a few blind alleyways too often, and that’s something to work on, we didn’t show enough composure on the ball to recycle and wait for the scoring opportunity, because as you see with Anna Jones; great finish for that second goal, we have the finishers if we can just get them into position.

“The game was there for us at that stage. Now it’s a balancing act against a really good team, and at that stage they were playing with a big wind, so you still had to have in mind that we wanted to keep the score down, and we were hoping to sneak another goal, but it didn’t happen.”

Instead, a yellow card for captain Tracey Dillon left the Lake County with far too much to do.

“In a tight game, you’re needing all of those things to go for you” Finneran said of the yellow card.

“If Donegal had lost someone, then maybe we would have got the momentum to push on and you would have been hoping for a pot shot towards the end to get something, but we were in the game for all of it, which is a big push on for us, and there’s something there to be learned and developed for the next day”.

In terms of personnel, most of the significant big names that were missing last weekend will be ready to do battle shortly, with a clash against Galway coming up on March 6.

“Ashley Ruane will be back to us for the next day and that’s one definite. Vicky Carr and Lucy McCartan look longer term, we don’t have a time frame on those yet, but everyone else should be good to go the next day," said Finneran.

“We’ve two weeks now, there’ll probably be a bit of a come down after those two games and we’ll try and reboot next week and get ready for that game.

“It’s got to be similar to today, get the mindset that we’ve got to be competitive, do that first of all. And if we do that and tweak a bit more going forward, be that bit more composed in possession, then who knows, we might cause an upset up there,” he concluded.