‘We’ve plenty of work to do’
A “very relieved” Jack Cooney was pragmatic after his Westmeath side’s narrow win in their Tailteann Cup debut against Laois in Portlaoise yesterday afternoon (Sunday), writes Gerry Buckley.
“It was knockout football today, and that’s the way both teams went at it. We don’t have a great record here. Look, games like today, even though they’re exciting, it’s just about winning and getting your name into the hat for tomorrow morning,” he added.
“In fairness to Laois, they showed great battling qualities right throughout the game. They came out in the second half and were very positive in how they set up, and they went at us. I think we were three points down at one stage, so it was good to come back and the lads showed good composure to hang on and get the win.
“Laois are a good footballing team, and I know that they’re hurting after the season that they put in, but they showed real good character out there. Billy (Sheehan) had got them really up for this game,” the winning bainisteoir continued.
The Coralstown/Kinnegad man conceded: “Our goal just came at the right time for us. We were kind of holding on and looking for a bit of traction in the game, and that goal really gave us something to hold onto and go after.
“Even though Sam (McCartan) is only 21, this is his fourth year in with us. He established himself towards the latter end of last year, post-Covid, and this year now he’s been a mainstay on the team. He’s an exciting young player, he’s a great prospect, and loves the game.”
The last few moments of the match were very dramatic, with all players - bar the man tasked with floating in a last-gasp ‘45’, Eoin Lowry – hemmed in and around the Westmeath goalmouth. Cooney smiled as he called the incident “proper defensive football”, before adding: “I think this is the great thing about the Tailteann Cup, that it brings those sort of exciting finishes. How many times have we seen a ball floated into the square in the dying seconds of a game and it ends up in the back of the net? So, they threw everything at us. We were just delighted to hold out.”
Both sides finished with 14 men, but Westmeath’s looked the more costly dismissal when skipper and defensive lynchpin Kevin Maguire picked up a straight red in the 20th minute. In this regard, Cooney opined: “I didn’t see it actually. The ref was called in by the linesman, seemingly the two lads just running up the pitch, so we’ll have a look at that on the video and see what we’re going to do.
“He’s been a great captain for us, Kevin, he’s a great leader on and off the pitch, and he’ll be disappointed if he’s not playing the next day, so we’ll be doing our best for him.”
When asked about injury worries, Cooney clarified: “Ray (Connellan) failed a fitness test before the game, so we’ll have a good look at him during the week. It’s a groin niggle that he picked up during the week. We kind of just erred on the side of caution more than anything else.”
The Tailteann Cup has had its fair share of critics, but Cooney concluded with an upbeat assessment of how the Westmeath lads were looking on the new competition: “We embraced it straight after the Kildare game. The first training session, everybody was there. So they’re committed and they’re on board for it.
“However, the lads won’t be happy with today’s performance. They’ll be delighted that they got the win, but they won’t be happy with the performance and we know that performance is not good enough to have a real good crack at it. So, we’ve plenty of work to do,” Cooney concluded.