U20s learned their lesson admits O'Brien

Kevin O’Brien, the Westmeath U20 hurling boss, was satisfied with his side’s victory over Derry in Saturday’s Leinster Championship.

“We learned a lesson from the Meath game: at the end of the day, Meath only beat Derry by six points. Today, we just blew Derry out of the water; we never let them into the game. I’m very happy with that. It turned into a non-contest in the second half; it was over at half-time. But we kept the boys working and they might have got the kick they needed against Meath,” he remarked.

A bit like the Westmeath senior footballers against Wicklow, Derry for some reason decided to play against the wind in the first half and it proved costly.

“Derry won the toss and I honestly thought they were going to play with the wind. I was shocked when they didn't: we had our mind made up from the start, ‘if we get that, we go with the wind and put them away’.

“I’d say they saw our second half against Meath and thought we would fade, but that was one of those games. It was great to get it out of our system,” said O’Brien.

“The lads had not been playing much together and it was our first time on grass. All these little things add up. But when we got the wind, we felt we had every chance. We changed our formation and put the ball inside first time where we had ball winners.”

Indeed, the decision to play David O’Reilly inside was proven correct and Westmeath are now where they want to be.

“We have Carlow next Saturday here: that’s the beauty of it. We are unbeaten, we have topped the group and that is what we wanted to do.

“It’s mission accomplished and we have no injuries,” enthused O’Brien.

The work rate of the Westmeath players impressed him.

“We didn’t do that against Meath; we got out-muscled. We had to put our hands up; we were second best. I looked at the stats at half-time and the 50/50 balls today, in the first half, we won 10 of the 11. It was the opposite case in Meath. That’s the lesson we learned: it doesn’t come easy at this level.

“We drilled that into the players: you have to work for every ball,” he observed.

“We brought in Calum McKeogh for that Job: he’s a tenacious young player. And Ivan Smyth as well.

“The players won the ball we weren’t winning against Meath. It was something we had to fix.”

O’Brien said it was his fault for the fade out in Navan two weeks earlier.

“We thought we had the job done against Meath (when we were nine points up). I take responsibility for that; we didn’t drive it on as a management team. I wouldn’t put it on the players.

“We wanted a reaction and we got it today. We have topped the group and we have Carlow next,” he said.

If Westmeath overcome Carlow, they will face Tier One opposition in the quarter-final.

“We are not looking past Carlow; we know they will be tough opponents,” remarked O’Brien.

He is joined by Brendan Murtagh, John Shaw and Dermot Curley on what is an impressive management team - all great Westmeath hurling servants for many years.