Westmeath's work rate impresses Finneran

By Kevin Egan

Taking charge of Westmeath up against his native county, and up against a group of players that he managed for four years, was always likely to be something of an emotional roller coaster for Michael Finneran last Sunday afternoon.

The nature of his team’s 3-7 to 1-11 win meant that it was a rollercoaster on the pitch too, with strong periods at either end of the game sandwiching a dreadful lull through the middle, and one that made it look for all the world as if the Lake County were headed for a third defeat of the year so far, and the heaviest of the three into the bargain.

“Four points down against the wind and against a strong Roscommon team that were flying it, we felt we were in trouble and my nerves were shot after it!” was his initial reaction.

“But in fairness to the girls, they worked their socks off to get back into it, without playing great football. We got the goals that we needed, Aoife (Connolly) kept her head to finish the goals and that was the difference. From our point of view, we weren’t showing composure in a lot of areas in our play. But when we did get it up to her, she showed it, which was crucial because in a game like today which wasn’t particularly high scoring, those goals were going to make all the difference.”

His diagnosis on how they went from 1-3 to no score in front after eight minutes, to trailing by a point at half-time, despite playing with the aid of a strong breeze?

“We talked about that at half-time and I’m sure we’ll talk about it again during the week! We’re not happy with it at all to be honest. We started very well and we just seemed to come off it.

"Now part of it is that Roscommon grew into the game. They’re a fine team with a lot of new players in there and they all look very comfortable at this level and they’re very athletic. They did get on top, they were winning all the 50/50 battles, and that even continued into some of the second half. So we went through a bad lull, but I’m proud of the way they worked their way out of it,” Finneran replied.

“We could have made three or four changes at half-time, but the general message was that those 50/50 balls, we were losing too many of them and we had to start winning them. Once we did that and we got a bit more of a foothold, we made a few changes then, but we had to get back up to the intensity level first. And it could have gone the other way, they had a few goal chances too, but we got them and took them, which was a bit of luck at the end of the day.”

Westmeath will face Tyrone next Sunday at TEG Cusack Park, Mullingar at 2pm, in another crucial Division 2 game.