Westmeath unfazed by near-miss
With the exception of the first twenty minutes, Westmeath were the better team in Croke Park, and Dempsey felt it just took his team a while to settle against an unknown quantity in the Meath side.
“I don’t think it will be any harder for us to lift our players than the Meath camp,” says Dempsey. “Looking at the game again last night, after we came to grips with the way Meath were playing, we put in a super performance.
“The game was in contrast to 2001, we were the team who were five points down at half-time and came back from a point down with only a couple of minutes to go. I think it showed the team spirit that has developed in this team this year.”
It was the unknown element in the Meath side that ruffled Westmeath early on. “Yeah, they changed around a lot of their players early on, and that confused us a little. It looked like they had loose men everywhere.”
Dempsey remains unconcerned with the damage that miss will have on Dessie Dolan. He gave a superb individual display on Sunday, which was only partially sullied by the miss.
“It was one of the great individual forward displays seen in Croke Park. And lots of fantastic sportspeople have missed easy chances. Great golfers have missed three-foot putts to win majors. Someone like Stuart Pearce can miss a penalty in a European Championship semi-final.
“Great sportsmen come back from that, can become even better because of it. It is crucial for Westmeath that Dessie will rebound for Saturday.”
Even more crucial when you consider that only three Westmeath players accounted for their 2-13. The performances of JP Casey and Fergal Wilson, in particular, were disappointing.
“Things like that don’t concern me. We have been hitting an average score of 2-12, 2-13 all year. The scores always come. We scored 2-12 to beat Limerick in the league final. There is a lot more positives to take from Sunday’s match.”
One negative remains. While Laois destroyed one hoodoo yesterday, beating Offaly in Tullamore, Dempsey doesn’t take much heed of the fact that Westmeath have never beaten their near neighbours in the championship.
“These are exciting things for the media and supporters to latch onto. People were talking about Laois not having beaten Offaly in Tullamore, and that record was broken. For a long time, Meath had a much better side than Westmeath, so the record didn’t mean too much. Now that the teams are on an even keel, Westmeath have a chance to beat them. It is just up to the best team to win on Saturday.”
Meanwhile, Derry manager Mickey Moran has blasted GAA authorities for not considering the welfare of his players, in refusing to rearrange his team’s qualifier with Wexford for Sunday.
Croke Park yesterday agreed with a request from the Waterford county board to play their qualifier match with champions Armagh on Sunday in Walsh Park, because of the clash with the replayed Munster hurling semi-final.
Armagh manager Joe Kernan, whose team is flying down to Waterford, said he was pleased with the decision. However, a similar request by the Derry county board fell on deaf ears.
“We made representations to Croke Park to move the game to Sunday,” Moran said. “Because we will not be able to leave Derry until six o’clock at the earliest. People in government jobs can’t get off work on Friday for a game.
“At a time when Croke Park says that welfare of the players is of paramount importance, they have not thought about the welfare of the Derry players.
“If they had moved the fixture to Sunday, as we requested, we could have left Derry at nine o’clock on Saturday morning and had a few breaks along the way to allow players with niggly injuries to get out and stretch. The way it is looking now, we won’t arrive in Wexford till two in the morning.”
Moran hopes the disruption won’t have an effect on his team.
“Well, it has just made a difficult match even more difficult for us. All this modern talk of player welfare didn’t seem to come into the equation. This is a do-or-die championship game, not a league game we are talking about here.”
The match will be played in Wexford Park at 2pm this Saturday, while Armagh’s tussle with Waterford will start at 2pm in Walsh Park on Sunday. Carlow’s match with Wicklow was also switched to Sunday because it clashed with the hurling championship encounter between Carlow and Kerry.
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