Tough task ahead, accepts O Flatharta

WESTMEATH boss Tomas O Flatharta wasn’t sugarcoating the task facing his side in a Leinster semi-final against Dublin.

The Midlanders needed extra time before limping to victory yesterday and the manager isn’t holding out much hope for their mission against the champions.

“If you were a pundit you wouldn’t give Westmeath any hope after the football you saw there today,” said O Flatharta.

And, he had no difficulty in accepting that while it might have been a hard-fought contest, the football was both “poor and very sloppy at times”. On the other hand, while expressing concern about fresh injuries to a few of his players – including David Duffy (hand), Derek Heavin (shoulder) and John Smyth (leg) – he said that it was beneficial from the point of view of giving game time to a number of others who hadn’t been available for the league.

“Even today, we didn’t start a good few lads. We know they wouldn’t have been able for the full game. When we brought them on I felt that they did make a difference, especially David O’Shaughnessy in the middle of the field.’’

Apart from indicating his unhappiness with aspects of the refereeing, Wicklow manager Mick O’Dwyer was philosophical.

“I suppose they had the better panel and we lost five or our players with bad injuries. We put in young fellows who hadn’t played for Wicklow before. Fair play to the players, they gave it their best shot.

“With a bit of luck we could have won it in regular time. We should have won it.’’

Most notably, they missed a late ‘45 which would have seen them through, but he suggested that the missed penalty (in the 10th minute) was costly.

“You can’t afford to miss a penalty. Cork got it Saturday and put it away and it changed the whole game for them. If we had got that, we would have gone five points up – and that would have made all the difference.’’

Clearly insinuating that he wasn’t happy with the referee’s performance, he pointed out that he had given “eight frees in a row” in extra time and kept play flowing before one of their players had to be taken off on a stretcher. However, he boxed clever in his actual comments.

“I am not going to start commenting about referees now. I think all the people out there saw what the situation was. There’s no point in talking about refs. To hell with them...they do a good job, considering!’’