Liam Dunne demands more as Wexford ‘go to sleep’

Liam Dunne gave his Wexford players a tongue lashing for not ‘obliterating’ vulnerable Westmeath.

The visitors limped over the winning line against a Westmeath side without up to half a dozen key players for various reasons.

The 2014 All-Ireland quarter-finalists seemed to switch off, following a lengthy injury stoppage late on.

And boss Dunne said a repeat against Kilkenny in two weeks will spell the end of his team’s Leinster title challenge.

“You’d need to be an awful lot better than that,” said Dunne. “The difference between Wexford and Kilkenny is Kilkenny would have come up here and obliterated Westmeath. We didn’t do that. The last 12 minutes, they came back into it. Sometimes unfortunately when a Wexford man turns off, he goes to sleep.

“A performance like that today, when we turned off, if we do that for five minutes against Kilkenny, they’ll kill you. End of story.

“No disrespect to Westmeath or any of the counties playing at the lower level but if that happens in those games you can probably get away with it. But the top counties will put you to the sword.”

Wexford lit up last year’s championship, partly by dethroning the All-Ireland holders Clare. A significant improvement is required to knock current holders Kilkenny out of the Leinster championship but Dunne is aiming for a historic win nevertheless.

“You have to be winning these games,” he said. “You go into the qualifiers and you go into a minefield so we go to Kilkenny to try and win. Clare and Dublin are there already in the qualifiers and so are Cork.

“Look, maybe it would be a good route for Kilkenny to go!

“No, we’ll be going there as huge underdogs in two weeks’ time but we’ll look forward to the game.”

Westmeath can look forward to the qualifiers with some optimism. Aside from the encouraging ending, they should have attacker Niall O’Brien back after suspension.

“He was sent off at U21 level,” explained manager Michael Ryan. “We appealed it twice. I have seen the DVD and it was absolutely unbelievable that he was ever sent off.”

As for the spirited finish at Cusack Park, Ryan praised his men.

“We were without five or six players by that stage but battled right to the end. Nobody ever gave up. Wexford are playing a division higher than us so to compete against better players and never throw in the towel is very positive.”

Ryan hopes Derek McNicholas’ neck injury isn’t serious. He was down for 12 minutes late on before being lifted off. “He was talking about pins and needles so the medics didn’t take any chances,” said the ex-Waterford manager.