Mullin says Garrycastle plan to take ball on the hop

Cathal Mullin won’t bore you and tell you Garrycastle are taking each game as it comes.

Instead, he’ll inform you they’re embracing each one as if their last.

Now 33 and goalkeeper in Westmeath’s 1999 U21 All-Ireland campaign, he is one of several 30-something players in the panel who appreciates this might be the one and only chance at this level.

It’s more than just a game with St Brigid’s, the boys down the road.

“We have to realise that we may not get back here again,” he says about what manager Anthony Cunningham refers to as a “swan-song”.

He doesn’t feel like a history-maker but that’s exactly what he and his team-mates were in becoming the first Westmeath club to win a Leinster senior title last December. In beating Dublin champions St Brigid’s, he agrees they have given encouragement to smaller clubs even if he feels their joy could be fleeting.

“A lot of other counties would think that if a club team in Westmeath can win something then a team from their county can win something as well.

“Coming back next year or the following year that might not be the case for us.”

He sees the net closing on Garrycastle a bit, you see. Champions the last three years, doing the four-in-a-row later this year will be onerous.

Up until last December, they found Leinster more than tough-going. In a way, winning it was a crowning achievement.

“Look at the Leinster club championship and it is so difficult to win. When you get out of Leinster, the opportunity is there and you have to go and make the most of it. Westmeath is becoming more and more difficult to win. In other years we would have been looking at getting out of Westmeath as there being a massive opportunity. So when we got out of Leinster we have to look at it as a once-off.”

There may be a hue of finality about Garrycastle’s run to today’s All-Ireland semi-final. Cunningham stated before the Leinster decider he would be stepping down as soon as the club’s interests in the competition were over.

But that’s not to say there’s an air of resignation. The manner in which they saw off St Brigid’s in Tullamore with a last gasp free exhibited their oak-like resolve after the Dublin champions had rallied in the closing stages.

“As a team we are now used to getting out of tighter scrapes than we would have in the past,” says Mullin. “That stood to us in the Leinster final. We knew they were going to come at us very strong. When you know you have gotten out of a tight battle or two, you believe that something will break your way. When the opportunity came up we had the right men to take it and we knew that ourselves. That is the way it panned out too.”

Mullin has done his bit — and then some — for Garrycastle. For the county final, he cut short a holiday in New Zealand to come back and man the net against Mullingar Shamrocks.

His commitment was rewarded then and again later in the Leinster campaign. He was glad of the Christmas break to soak up all that winning a first provincial title meant.

“It has been brilliant because the way it has panned out we had the opportunity to celebrate winning Leinster. We needed to do that, especially as first-time winners.”

He adds: “When we came back after Christmas we looked at Leinster as a means of getting into an All-Ireland semi-final. Whenever we finish up, we will sit down and say that was brilliant, it was magnificent. At the moment the opportunity is for us to get through. It might be a team 10 miles over the road but it is still and All-Ireland semi-final.”

The novelty of Cunningham having a foot in both camps — he’s a long-time Brigid’s member and former manager — has taken up a lot of the build-up to today’s game in Pearse Park.

Mullin agrees it could work in Garrycastle’s favour.

As he explains: “Possibly yes. Anthony will take all of that on his shoulders and deflect as much of that away from the players as he can.

“At the end of it regardless of who is involved it is a game of football. And after 60 minutes one team will go through and one team won’t.

“It doesn’t matter how much it is talked about beforehand, we have to ensure it us coming out on top at the end of it.”