McHugh hails players after extra special triumph

Westmeath reach Leinster Holy Grail with epic extra-time victory over Dublin

Westmeath manager Mark McHugh summoned one final effort from his brilliant players at half-time in extra-time of Sunday’s Leinster senior football final in Croke Park.

His peerless troops had established a lead of seven points (1-26 to 0-22) after a blistering opening period into Hill 16 and McHugh urged his players to “sprint like you never sprinted before” during a stirring address at the brief interval. That was the moment he and the thousands of Westmeath supporters who travelled to the famous stadium realised the county was closing in on a stunning Leinster senior football success, just their second in history.

McHugh’s revealed afterwards that his message was simple – protect the lead at all costs.

“I just told them, it’s ten minutes of your life. We had put ourselves in a serious position and the only thing I remember saying was 'lads if we lose the ball, we have to sprint back because if we don’t concede a goal here, we’ll win the game'.

“I said if we lose the ball, sprint like you never sprinted before, just get back.”

McHugh’s use of his panel proved decisive as Westmeath powered through the closing stages. Jack Duncan, who may have felt unfortunate to be withdrawn at half-time, returned in extra-time to score 1-1, while Shane Corcoran was also reintroduced as fresh legs made a huge impact.

“I thought we managed the squad pretty well today, and in extra-time we got fresh legs back on the field,” McHugh said. “We had three subs ready to go, Ian Martin, Tom Molloy and even Jack Duncan.," he explained.

“Jack might have felt hard done by to be taken off at half-time, but came on and ended up getting 1-1. And he was there for kickouts; he was playing wing-back and I think he ended the game at corner-back actually.

“We have full belief in our squad and that’s what we probably tried to do. The first thing we tried to do when we came in was build a panel. There’s a lot of hard conversations to try to get people to believe that this is something to commit to and that was the hardest thing for me early on.

“We had to meet different players and there’s more players out there that we need to meet again for next year. And we want the best players in Westmeath playing for Westmeath. There’s no doubt about that and these days are in front of you if you give us the opportunity to work with you,” he added.

One of the biggest calls made by McHugh was persuading John Heslin to return from retirement and the veteran forward made a major contribution after coming on in the final. McHugh explained that form and commitment earned Heslin his recall.

“We have an open panel. Sometimes and the manager might say, ‘well lads, we have an open panel; you’re dropped here but if you play good club football you might get back in’. We actually stick to that.

"Ian Martin came in four weeks ago because he was playing very, very good club football and he came on against Kildare. He came on there again today.

“When we lost Luke (Loughlin), obviously, to an injury we felt we needed a wee bit of reinforcements panel-wise. John was playing unbelievably good club football; I think he kicked 2-9 one day and 3-11 another day. Would you not bring him in?

“And I suppose after a consultation with a few players to see what they thought, and we knew it would be news, and that’s the reason we probably had a talk about it. They all felt like we’d be better looking at him than looking for him.

“I think he showed there that he was. He kicked an unbelievable point and he caught the ball around the middle. And it wasn’t just for today either - we have two All-Ireland series games, at least, to play.

“We have another year to play, hopefully, next year as well. There’s a longer-term plan here for Westmeath. I wouldn’t be taking him back in for one game or anything like that.

“I think he showed today that he’s still well-fit for the level; his work commitments have changed and he’s about more often. When I asked him, he was so willing to play for Westmeath again; that was the big one that stood to me. I thought I might have to talk him around or something like that, but that wasn’t it, he really, really wanted to play for Westmeath again.

“I’m delighted after all his years of service that he gets a Leinster medal here today too.”

McHugh, who won an All-Ireland title with Donegal in 2012, admitted management brings a completely different pressure to playing.

“It actually is completely different. When you’re a player, you’re just worried about yourself. Like, you know, Matthew (Whittaker, who sat alongside McHugh in the post-match press conference) woke up this morning and he knew his role and his job to do and that’s all he had to do.

“I have to look out, I suppose, for every man’s job and make sure everybody’s doing it right and if there’s somebody doing it wrong, we need to fix it very quickly.

“I suppose the emotions of it and the pressure of it, you know, being the boss because literally I am responsible for what I put out in the field and how we play.

“The worry all week for me was that the occasion may get to them because it was so new for a lot of them. I was just praying that they were going to perform and if we performed and we weren’t good enough, then we’d shake Dublin’s hand at the end.

“But I just didn’t want to walk off the field having not performed but I think you’ve seen after the ten minutes like we were here to play. I thought to a man today, bar maybe a spell of 10 minutes either side of half-time, I thought we were a better team, yeah, so absolutely delighted, very emotional.”

McHugh pointed to Senan Baker’s late equaliser in normal time as the moment he felt the momentum swing decisively Westmeath’s way.

“It looked like it was gone after Dublin got the two-pointer from the free and then they tapped over a score. It looked like they had won it.

“And we got the kick-out away, to Tadhg (Baker) and we got the ball up and Senan kicked an unbelievable score. We could have finished it off in normal time, but I knew coming off the field we were going to win the game in extra-time.

“I felt that we had the legs, we had the energy and we had the better players on our bench to finish the job. Dublin it’s no secret that their squad is a wee bit stretched and when they were digging down to the bottom of their panel, I thought we had better quality coming on.”