Mark McHugh's Westmeath rebuild has county believing again

At a casual remove, you might think Westmeath reaching the Leinster final is no surprise but the end of the 2024 season, several long-time key players departed the Westmeath panel. This is a new team

Westmeath beat Kildare after extra-time to reach the Leinster SFC final. Pic: ©INPHO/James Lawlor

He’s still plugging away, a bit like the county itself.

You’ll remember Gary Connaughton, their ginger-haired goalie who won a Leinster in 2004 and an All-Star in 2008 before flipping his cap backwards and helping Tom Cribbin on the line when the county got back to a couple of Leinster finals a decade ago.

These days he’s giving a hand with both his club Tubberclair that reached last year’s Leinster intermediate final and the county U20s that won last year’s All-Ireland B final. Coaching the goalies, helping pick the team, on the ground. From there he’s been able to survey the general landscape of Westmeath football with all its inherent peaks and valleys.

Since Westmeath made the inaugural All-Ireland quarter-finals exactly 25 years ago with a scintillating run through the backdoor under Luke Dempsey, the county has had only seven seasons in which it has been neither relegated nor promoted.

Even calling them a yo-yo county like their noisy neighbours Roscommon wouldn’t be entirely accurate: relegation could be followed by another relegation as easily as promotion, as three successive demotions in the middle of the last decade underlined. As Connaughton puts it, “We go in cycles. We’ve good years and bad years. We’re not a county that will be good every year.” 

At the outset of 2026 you couldn’t tell which it would be. If anything the outlook was gloomy. “Mark McHugh took over a team that no one knew what he could get out of them,” says Connaughton. “It wasn’t the most attractive job in the country by a long shot.” 

At a casual remove you would think Westmeath’s progression to a Leinster final is not totally surprising. You’d have seen them win the inaugural Tailteann Cup in 2022 under Jack Cooney and the large homecoming in Mullingar that triggered; how under the management of Dessie Dolan they rattled the likes of Armagh, Galway, Tyrone and Derry in the Sam Maguire group phases in 2023 and 2024. That this team hardly came out of nowhere.

Only it kind of has. Just five of the team that saw action in the 2022 Tailteann Cup final were still around to feature in this past month’s wins over Meath and Kildare, and just six of the starters who in 2024 were only denied a win over eventual All-Ireland finalists Galway by a late Shane Walsh goal. At the end of the 2024 season a raft of big names all departed: John Heslin, Ronan O’Toole, Kevin Maguire, all 2022 Tailteann Cup All-Stars in central positions, not to mention Kevin Martin, a county legend since the day he racked up 2-3 against Meath back in 2015.

In Dermot McCabe’s sole season, the team went winless in Division Two and were knocked out of the Tailteann Cup by Wicklow at the quarter-final stage. The county, as Connaughton says, was in potential freefall. “People were wondering where the next team was going to come from.” It would be built this past winter by McHugh, McCabe’s coach and unlikely successor.

“He pushed players out of their comfort zone. Had them running through the woods up around Castlepollard by the Cavan border. When my own club lost to Sallins in the Leinster club final in December, he had a couple of our lads like Matthew Whittaker and Stephen McGonagle playing a challenge game against Galway the following week. Told them to not feel sorry for themselves, that there were bigger fish to fry.” 

Dempsey himself, in many ways the father of the Westmeath revolution, has also been impressed by how McHugh has galvanised the county. Dempsey’s retired now, from both coaching and teaching, though he still goes into his old school in Rochfortbridge twice a week to help students and younger teachers with maths.

He’s seen first-hand the power of momentum within the county. At the beginning of 1995 he was a rookie manager over the county minors with no real expectation or even clue. By the end of that summer they were All-Ireland champions, and by the end of the decade U21 All-Ireland champions too. In 2000 they were both minor and U21 Leinster champions, while in 2001 Dempsey, in his first year over the seniors, led them to promotion and the All-Ireland quarter-finals, having claimed a string of scalps, including Division One league champions Mayo.

“Last year there was a real flatness around the county. But it’s amazing what a good start can do. We had it in those years. And Westmeath had it this year winning the O’Byrne Cup, beating Kildare in the final.” 

He was back in Tullamore when the counties met again last month in the Leinster semi-final, and was taken by the spirit the team showed. So was Bernard Flynn, one of Meath’s greatest sons but a long-time resident of Mullingar.

“I’ve never seen a Westmeath team that works so hard without the ball and to get it back,” says Flynn. “It’s what broke Kildare and what destroyed Meath. And that stems from McHugh. The players can see he’s pouring every ounce of himself into this project.” 

As devastating as it was to lose Maguire, Heslin and O’Toole the winter before last, two other 2022 Tailteann All-Stars, centre-back Ronan Wallace and midfielder Sam McCartan have remained as pillars upon which McHugh has built his team. “Those two lads, along with Ray Connellan,” says McHugh, “are as good a triumvirate of leaders as you’ll have on any team in Leinster.” 

To supplement them then there has been a decent crop of players to come through. Four of the side that won last year’s U20 All-Ireland B title featured in the win over Kildare last month.

“The biggest problem we have as a county is we still don’t have a centre of excellence,” says Connaughton. “We’re still relying on the goodwill of clubs. But there’s great work going on at schools level. [Coláiste Mhuire] Mullingar obviously won the colleges All-Ireland. Their opponents in the Leinster final were Marist Athlone coached by Fergal Wilson; you had 4,000 people in Cusack Park for that. Moate coached by Dessie Dolan got to a Leinster semi-final.” 

Dempsey, having coached St Joseph’s Rochfortbridge himself for decades, will echo that. “A good schools scene does not automatically translate into county success. But there is a lot of hard work going on in the schools in Westmeath, bringing players in at 7am for gym sessions right through the year. None of the Dublin schools are doing that which is partly why Dublin schools have won nothing for years.” 

This year it showed at underage; Westmeath beat Dublin at both minor and U20, though neither Westmeath side would make it beyond the Leinster quarter-final. But as for beating their seniors, that’s another story.

To get over the line Flynn reckons Westmeath will have to score three goals. But it’s possible. “The one thing Westmeath have is no fear. For all the progress Louth have made the last few years they still have a serious inferiority complex when it comes to Dublin that goes back decades. There’s no chance of this Westmeath team giving Dublin too much respect.” 

For Dempsey that boldness is epitomised by McHugh recalling John Heslin to the setup. To people outside the county it might seem a risk but for Dempsey who coached him to a couple of county titles with St Loman’s, it was sensible and shrewd. 

“If Luke O’Loughlin is out for the year and you have John Heslin in the shape he is in and scoring 2-12 for the club the other week against Moate, then of course you bring him in. And look at what McHugh has done. Before the Kildare game he announced Luke was out for the year and it helped take all the hype away from the players. Now everyone is talking about Heslin.” 

Well, Heslin and Roscommon says Connaughton, who is working in Athlone these days.

“It’s all about football talk around here. There hasn’t been as much excitement around the place since 2004. For a younger generation to see what it’s like to bring a Leinster back to Mullingar would be something else.”