Ironman Cribbin believes in going the distance with Westmeath

Tom Cribbin and those who know him, there was poetic symmetry to his Westmeath side’s 10-point comeback victory over Meath. As an Ironman veteran, Cribbin knows all about perseverance and absorbing pain to make gain.

“It’s all about endurance getting through an event. A marathon, you race it. At my age, you would never be able to race an Ironman hard. It’s about trying to stay on your feet and keep going for 12 hours. Ironman is a marathon, 180km cycle and 3.8km swim. It can take anything up to 17 hours.”

Work and Westmeath commitments have put the kibosh on him doing any more Ironmans, as much as he misses them. They appeal to his obsessive character.

“And the beauty about Ironman, it’s all categorised so from 50-55 you’re trying to win your own age category so even when you get a bit older you can race between 56-60 so you’re always racing in your own age category and you’ve a chance of doing something in it if you want to get serious on it.”

He actually decided to succeed Paul Bealin as Westmeath manager after finishing last year’s New York marathon. “Within minutes of finishing the marathon and I was in serious pain. I said I’m never doing another marathon!”

Obsessive and brutally honest would be two apt descriptions of Cribbin. After losing to Meath in the O’Byrne Cup in January, he admitted his players were suffering a “crisis of confidence”. A game later, they ended a run of 15 defeats on the trot when they beat DCU in Kinnegad. He recalls that evening: “I have never seen anything like the effort and the honesty. A lot of young players played really well and a few of the senior players played exceptionally well and it was blood and guts.

“We didn’t know each other, I was playing them in positions that I didn’t have a clue with a lot of them and that performance told me mountains about them and that’s why I had so much confidence in them.”

Yet come the end of the league and demotion to Division 3, Cribbin again unloaded on his players when the dictaphones were put in front of him.

“These big players are not standing up,” he lashed.

“I don’t know why or what’s going on with them. You saw the other lads and they just put everything on the line, lads that are general average players. But the few big lads who should be standing out leading, f**king lay down. and that’s the real trouble with this team.”

Cribbin revealed last month that he apologised for that outburst at the county’s training camp in Mayo. The players appreciated his honesty.

It was never a motivating tactic, he insists: “There was nothing planned. I just speak my mind the whole time, off the cuff. That’s the way I am. I’m very passionate, the lads know that. I should have said it to the players first. Hands up. They know that. I went in and apologised to them.

“I told them that straight out. I had promised them I’d try and never let it happen again, but I couldn’t guarantee them!

“Because if I get frustrated or if I feel we’ve under-performed, if someone gets me before someone cools me down, I’m liable to blow a gasket again. That’s just the way I am - I hate under-performing, as we all do.

“But, you know, at the same time, I wasn’t afraid to admit that I was wrong and hold my hand up and say, ‘yeah, I should have dealt with it in-house and dealt with it better’.

And yet Westmeath have beaten Louth, Wexford and Meath since that outburst. “Seriously, I don’t think it was that. The lads know my form before that. They know what I think of them. I’ve said it all year. I’ve told them what our goal was all year - to get to the Leinster final and see what we can do. And I convinced them that we could beat Meath from the start of the year.”

After all, Ironmen don’t start if they don’t expect to finish.