Pat Flanagan wants players “who can win”

All Gaels, both inside and outside the Lake County, know that the Westmeath senior football team is a side in transition. Many of the heroes who brought unprecedented honour and glory to the maroon and white colours in the ‘noughties' are coming to the end of their illustrious careers. The man charged with getting the very best of the young and not-so-young players in the county for the next two years is Pat Flanagan, having taken on the roles of both county under-21 and senior manager. The Offaly native is well known in these parts, particularly for his very successful stint in charge of Tyrrellspass a few years ago. However, when Gerry Buckley spoke to him last weekend on behalf of the Westmeath Examiner, Gerry found out a lot more about Pat's past as a player, manager and selector and, more importantly, about his future plans for his adopted county.Gerry Buckley: Pat, we all know you are an Offaly man, but I believe you have very strong Westmeath roots.Pat Flanagan: Yes, Gerry, my parents were from Westmeath, my father from Rochfortbridge and my mother from Delvin. Indeed, I have five sisters and two brothers and every one of them was born in Westmeath bar me. I was actually the only one of the family who was born in Offaly.GB: And as a player I know you represented Offaly.PF: I captained Offaly at every underage level. I was also a member of a Clara team that was very successful. We won at under-14, under-16, minor and under-21 levels. We grew up together and we won the grades right through, but there was only three of that team who won senior championship medals. I was actually 30 when I won my first senior championship medal in 1991. I was captain that year when we won our first championship in 27 years. I continued playing for another number of years and we won another championship in 1993 and were beaten in another final in 1995. I took over the Clara minor team at that time and we won two minor championships. Then I took over Clara seniors, but it didn't go too well. I joined Kilbeggan in 1999 and we won the Westmeath intermediate championship in 2000. I came back to Clara in 2003 and we won the senior championship that year. Rhode beat us in the semi-final in 2004 and I went on to Tyrrellspass in 2005. We won the under-21 13-a-side championship there and we went on to win two senior championships in 2006 and 2007. We lost to Moorfield in the Leinster semi-final in 2006 and a Leinster final to St. Vincent's in 2007. We were beaten by Castledaly in a replay of the semi-final the following year. That cuts deep, that we didn't win a Leinster championship or win a Westmeath three-in-a-row. I came back to Clara in 2009 and we won the senior championship again.GB: You were also asked by Tomás Ó Flatharta to become a senior selector for Westmeath in 2009.PF: That's right. Obviously, it wasn't the most successful campaign. We lost all our league matches.GB: And we had a couple of real horror stories along the way.PF: Yeah, we got over Wicklow in the championship, but I think the worst day in my life was when Dublin hammered us in the semi-final.GB: Yes, the worst day in many of our lives! Having said that, when Tomás left you were probably hopeful of taking over as manager.PF: I was after working my way up from the time I was at Clara, after winning eight championships in various grades. The way I am, I try to do the best I can and the best I can would have been to move on to inter-county level. Yes, I did put my name forward and I was extremely disappointed not to get it, to be totally honest. However, that was the decision of the County Board at the time and you have to accept these things. You move on and I came back and took over Clara and we won the senior championship, which was some consolation for not getting the Westmeath job.GB: But when the powers-that-be came knocking at your door after Brendan Hackett's brief reign, you were happy to take over on a temporary basis for the 2010 championship.PF: Yes, the opportunity arose and I definitely saw it as a good chance both for myself and for Westmeath to progress. The stats would have said otherwise, but I had great belief in the players, even at that stage. I thought that we could turn things round. We did to a certain degree by beating Wicklow, but unfortunately we struggled against Louth due to a combination of a lot of things on the day, and the lead-up to it. The biggest single issue on the day was a lack of confidence, I think.GB: As somebody who has endured more than my fair share of suffering at the hands of Meath since I was a kid, I have to be honest and say I feared what might happen against them in the Leinster final had we reached it, given their display against Dublin. However, as we all know, Louth were robbed in the final. So, as it transpired, maybe we could have actually won the Leinster title this year?PF: We would have gained an awful lot of confidence from the Louth game had we won, particularly not playing as well as we could have. We got very close, despite a couple of decisions on the way which didn't help us. If we had got over Louth, we would have put up a very good fight and possibly won that game against Meath.GB: That's all water under the bridge now, so moving ahead to 2011, you've brought in two new selectors, Tom Darcy and Larry Giles, both very well respected former Westmeath players.PF: What I wanted to do was get people involved who were totally involved with football all their lives and also would hold the respect of people, especially modern players. Tom and Larry fit into that category. They have proven that in the past and have played with the county with a great degree of enthusiasm and energy, and willingness to prove themselves for their county. I would have known Tom from playing in challenge games in Offaly and he worked in Clara for a while also. Obviously, Larry played for Westmeath for a number of years also. I wanted a guy like Tom who could do defensive coaching, and Larry who can work with the forwards. It's not just selectors I was after, but guys who could coach as well in those areas.GB: And Trevor Smullen is coming in to do the physical training.PF: Yes, Trevor played with Longford for 11 years, so he has a good degree of knowledge in the inter-county scene and he is a fitness instructor as well. He has a very good background and showed a huge willingness to join the team. I know Trevor well as he work together in the Community Training Centre in Mullingar. He has developed programmes for the guys for gyms and I think everybody is very happy with them. I think they see the benefit of what we are trying to do this year.GB: Joe Daly and Damien McLoughlin are staying on board in their roles, I believe.PF: Yes, Joe and Damien have been a massive help. We'd definitely struggle a lot without Joe. The knowledge he has gained over the years has been excellent. Jerry O'Flynn is staying on as doctor and I don't think Westmeath people realise the amount of work that Jerry does. He is certainly one person that people should have huge appreciation for. The amount of effort he puts in is immense. A guy called Colm McKay is our physio, he is from down around the Tang area. There will be one or two others involved down the line.GB: We are now in the middle of the two-month period when collective training is banned. What are your thoughts on that particular ban?PF: It's difficult to understand what it's all about, to be honest. You have a number of guys who are in college and are training and playing away as normal. You also have the Garrycastle lads who only finished last week and obviously they would have been training up to then. The idea of this burnout thing probably needs to be revisited and see if there is a different means that can be applied, because certainly it doesn't make a whole pile of sense that you could have maybe 50 per cent of your panel training with colleges and the other 50 not meant to do anything.GB: So what are our lads actually doing at the moment?PF: The boys have been given a fitness programme for gym work and those guys are attending either gyms in Mullingar or in different locations where they are working. Trevor and I have drawn up as programme for them and they've been working on that for a couple of weeks now. Hopefully, we'll be changing the programme around in the near future in the lead-up to the O'Byrne Cup.GB: Páidí Ó Sé used to refer to the O'Byrne Cup as “a chance to blow out some dirty petrol”. How do you envisage the O'Byrne Cup?PF: Well, it's an opportunity to see players. There are a number of players playing with their colleges in the tournament, but it's a chance to see other guys and how they will perform. I spoke to Larry, Tom and Trevor and we went with a panel that we thought was good enough, adding players from last year, rather than going and having trial games. In my opinion, it is very difficult for a guy to show himself in a trial game because he's standing beside a fellow for an hour whom he's never met before, and he's supposed to be judged on that, which is totally unfair. Basically what we did is we drew up a panel from the year gone by and we've added fellows to that. The O'Byrne Cup will be an opportunity to see how some of these lads perform.GB: As you well know, the backbone of the side in recent years are all over 30. Have any players formally retired?PF: Well, Martin Flanagan and Damien Healy told me that they would be finishing after we lost to Derry in the Qualifiers. Both were tremendous servants. Damien was travelling from Galway and Martin was working night shifts. John Keane has serious knee problems and is finding it difficult to sleep by times with pains in his knees and he has decided to opt out also. Derek Heavin is still recovering from the serious injury he picked up against Louth and we will have to see if it is possible for him to come back.GB: We have a very poor underage record for a decade now, certainly at minor level. Can we expect to see new talent emerging at senior level?PF: Westmeath is a small county with limited resources but the under-21 team reached this year's Leinster final and the semi-final a year earlier, which a lot of people seem to forget, losing both narrowly to Dublin. You would imagine that a number of those guys would be coming through. Also, Brendan Murtagh, who is better known as a hurler, has joined the panel and will be a major benefit to it. He is a big man and is very interested in training. The likes of Andrew Whitney and Simon Quinn, those guys could make an impact too.GB: Have you approached anybody who has come up with a “sorry, not interested, too much like hard work” response?PF: Not really, but the likes of Francis McLoughlin from Milltown has commitments to his college and can't commit to the county.