Gavin praises his side's defensive display

Westmeath U20 football manager Damien Gavin was thrilled for his players after they defeated Longford to win the Andrew Corden Cup for the first time.

The ‘B’ competition is only in its second year and the Lake County now move forward into the All-Ireland series - where they will face Limerick in their All-Ireland semi-final in Thurles on Saturday (1pm) - which is a great boost to the players after a very disappointing Leinster campaign.

“I’m just delighted for the lads, really. They worked really hard and even though we made a couple of mistakes, they fought and kept plugging away. In the end, they just came out the right side of it,” remarked Gavin.

He said his side were keen to show they are better than results in the Leinster championship suggested.

“The players were disappointed with the Leinster championship. This was a chance for them to get back on board and they have proved to people how good they are. They are a fine team, well able to play,” he enthused.

“We left it tighter than we should have there. We had three or four really good goal chances, maybe tried to force a few shots as well. And to be fair to Longford, when we gave them chances and kept them in the game, they took their chances.”

Gavin was full of praise for his side’s defensive display. “We tried to do a bit more analysis on the opposition and Liam Daly did a massive job on Matthew Carey, who was their danger man. I know he got a couple of points, but Liam was outstanding, as was Jason Macken. Daragh (Lowry) was on Paddy Moran and Adam Keane was on Matthew (Carey). They were the lads that we pinpointed, but they all worked very hard,” he observed.

“We knew we had to get men back, but needed to be able to attack also. We needed to get that balance right. To be fair to Longford, around the middle third, I thought they would tire and things would open up, but they kept pressing and pressing. We found it hard to break them down. One of our strengths is pace coming out of defence but we didn’t really get a hance to get a run on them that way.

"A couple of times it opened up and that is where the goals came from. We said at half-time, ‘if we can get them running towards their own goals, that’s where the opportunities will come from’," Gavin added.