Hackett rues Westmeath's missed chances

In his post-match analysis, team manager Brendan Hackett highlighted the failure to convert any one of "four or five good chances to equalise" when only trailing by a point in the second half, as Westmeath's ultimate undoing after a gutsy comeback just fell short of garnering a third Leinster under-21 football title for the Lake County in Parnell Park last Sunday"What were we, a point behind with three minutes to go? Yeah, at that stage I thought we were in the driving seat and, had any one of those chances gone over, we had the momentum. Particularly, if the goal chance (for James Durkan) had gone the other side of the post, I think it would have been very difficult for Dublin to come back at that stage. Mentally, it would have been a real blow to them. Look, that's football, it's inches sometimes," the Monaghan native added.When queried as to whether his charges had left themselves with too much to do when trailing by six points at half-time, Hackett responded: "We probably didn't play to our ability in the first half. We would like to have gone in at half-time a little bit closer, but there was a reasonable wind out there and people wouldn't have realised that. We were under pressure in the first half and they were running at us. That's what we expected them to do. With the wind advantage they were in the ascendancy. People don't set out to foul. They set out to contain as best they can. There were a couple of uncharacteristic mistakes by guys in the first half and, when one or two things go wrong, it probably takes you a little bit of time to really settle. When we did settle, you saw the football we are capable of playing. The first 20 minutes of the second half, we were just great in every aspect of our play - fantastic defending, marvellous midfield play and some fine attacking play inside."Reflecting overall on the campaign and on the fact that the bulk of the squad are under-21 again next year, Hackett was philosophical: "It was a great achievement to get to the final. We beat three big powers, Kildare, Meath and Laois, to get here and we were within three minutes of probably beating another one. So, it's huge for the boys' development and it just shows you that there is a lot of talent in Westmeath. There will probably be at least six of them in the senior squad coming up to the summer and it's probably safe to say that you could see eight or nine of them on the senior team within the next two to three years."In conclusion, the Westmeath manager was magnanimous in defeat, stating: "Hats off to Dublin, at this stage they are Leinster champions and they probably just had that little bit more guile than we had on the day."