‘We’ll take the positives out of it’ - Dermot McCabe
Westmeath football manager Dermot McCabe saw plenty of positive signs from a team featuring several new faces in last Sunday’s narrow defeat to Louth (1-17 to 0-18).
“The lads put a huge effort into the game and sort of died with their socks on. The lads worked extremely hard and even talking to Ger Brennan (Louth manager) afterwards, he felt that they were probably lucky to get the points out of it.
"Every day there is huge learnings for us. We’ll take the positives out of it and try to correct the negatives and work forward from there,” said McCabe, after his first competitive match in charge.
Louth went six points up in the first half (0-9 to 0-3), but Westmeath responded valiantly and went three ahead themselves in the second period (0-13 to 0-10). The awarding of two points for kicks from outside the 40-metre arc, in accordance with the new rules, obviously played a significant role in the flow of the contest.
“There are going to be swings and turns in this sort of game. For them to get six points up, they kicked a couple of two-pointers,” remarked McCabe. “The two-pointers are going to be interesting. Old style, we might have been eight scores to six at half-time and there was a bit of a breeze against us in the first half. The rules are the rules now. Some days they will work for us and some days they won’t. That’s what we have to work hard on.
“For the last ten or 15 minutes of the first half, we controlled a lot of that game which is great. We’re only together a short span of time but for spells of the game, we controlled parts of it. There are a few little things that we can work on. Moral victories are no good for us, but the lads know they’re on the pulse of it and close to being very competitive,” he continued.
Understandably, McCabe was delighted with the performance of Luke Loughlin, who scored 0-12 and led the Westmeath attack impressively.
“Luke is giving us everything. He’s a huge leader for us and his attitude has been tremendous. I’m delighted for Luke. He’s a huge target man for us,” said McCabe, adding that other players are capable of stepping up to the mark in future outings.
Although he acknowledged that the physical strength of Louth was difficult to overcome around midfield in the second half, McCabe was pleased with how his charges competed for possession from kickouts. He reckoned Westmeath won a decent share of kickouts, both those hit by Westmeath’s rookie goalkeeper Conor McCormack and restarts delivered by Louth. “Some of that is down to routines and some of that is sort of desire, and I think our lads showed a lot of that today which they can be very proud of.”
Asked about the fitness demands involved in the modern game, McCabe said: “You try and do your work through December and we had a bad frost and we lost a couple of challenge matches. But we’re not here to make excuses, and we’re very positive towards a great bunch of lads who are working hard to represent Westmeath very well.”
As a former Cavan football star, McCabe surely knows plenty about one of his home county’s traditional rivals, Monaghan, whom Westmeath face in Clones next Sunday (2pm).
“Monaghan is going to be a huge test. They controlled long spells of the game in Kingspan Breffni last night (a match which Monaghan won by 2-22 to 0-20) and that’s what they’ll try to do. But we’ll worry about our game, we’ll worry about our performances and try to get our leaders leading and everyone else working hard and there were great signs of that today,” he added.
In addition to all the players missing from last year, the Westmeath panel for last Sunday’s game was weakened further by injuries to Senan Baker, Nigel Harte, Jack Murtagh and Sam Smyth. And McCabe indicated that it will probably be a couple of weeks before these players will be ready to resume action.