Brendan Hackett concedes that relegation "is difficult to avoid"

Despite the promise shown in the unlucky one-point defeat in Navan eight days earlier, Westmeath's senior footballers suffered a big setback in their quest to avoid dropping down a division for the second year running after last Sunday's loss to Laois, with team manager Brendan Hackett now accepting that relegation "is going to be difficult to avoid. I said it would take five points to stay up and you would have thought that Tipperary and Laois and a point in one other game would have been what the target was, so having let that one slip today means it is going to be very difficult."The Monaghan man stated: "I'm very disappointed and we all are because when you score 3-8 you would expect to win most games, but when you concede 24 points it kind of tells you a big story. Any team that scores 24 points are let run at will and let pass the ball at will and we just didn't apply enough pressure and that was the one thing we emphasised." Ironically, just two short years ago, Westmeath's mean defence was the talk of the country, while the forwards (even with the now-absent marquee duo of Dessie Dolan and Denis Glennon on board) struggled to score goals.In relation to the Lake County defence, Hackett reflected: "We have lost defenders like John Keane and Derek Heavin and they are two huge players. It sounds like a cliché at this stage but when you have a team that's been successful from 2004 until 2008, there was a spine of players that were in that team and they have gone and that is the bottom line.It's just going to take tim.to replace those players. I can understand when you have a team that are very successful, you keep playing the same players over and over and you don't introduce players so what we probably have now in Westmeath is a generation of players in their late 20s and early 30s who have a lot of inter-county experience and then guys in their mid-20s that haven't played inter-county at all, and then you have 20-year-olds who are the next generation. That's the reality and you can't just pluck players out that have had the experience and I think that is what you see. The players that have come in lack the experience."One reporter asked bluntly as to whether some of the new panellists simply lacked the ability to perform at this level, but Hackett came up with a general answer: " It is going to take time to put a new team together.One team has just finished and the team that is going to replace it is not going to be built in six months. It is going to take at least a year to a year and a half. I think the encouraging signs are you will see a lot of the under-21s who will form the basis of the new team. There will probably be eight or nine of them come the championship." Asked about the importance of the St. Patrick's Day Leinster semi-final, also against Laois, in the latter grade, he replied: "I am very optimistic about the under-21s. I think there is a lot of talent, I think they apply themselves very well and I think if you look at what we are asking them to do, they are certainly playing the type of game where they are scoring but they are also conceding very little. The great thing about the under-21s is they are strong throughout the field. There is no reliance on one or two players, they are strong everywhere. With the seniors we are scoring as is evident in the last two games but we are just conceding too much. Westmeath haven't won anything at underage in ten years so that tells you what you need to know. Long-term you have to concentrate on a generation of footballers from under-21 down to minors, down to under-16s, and that is what it is going to take."A few weeks since Steven McDonnell ran riot in Crossmaglen, Laois' Michael John Tierney similarly caused panic in the Westmeath rearguard whenever he got possession and Hackett was asked about the corner forward's solo show, but he avoided the specifics of the Parnells man 13-point haul. "Pressure starts all over the field. You don't target one man and close him down, you have to close down the ball that is coming into him in the first place. Every time we fought back we just let them back into the game and that is due to lack of pressure. Every time we got scores we conceded scores too easily. It was almost like they got two scores for every one that we got. You can't concede scores and they were conceded all over the pitch.We mispassed, we dropped balls, and it is very hard to do anything about it when you are looking at it. I would probably say we gave away the possession that we had on at least 30 occasions. If you are giving away possession and you are not putting pressure on the opposition you are not going to win any match."Ironically, given Hackett's oft-expressed desire to build a team, 34-year-old Martin Flanagan returned to the maroon and white colours last Sunday. Brendan commented: "Martin was great and it was a case of any ball that went in he won, but it was the same in the first half, so did (Paul) Greville. We were winning ball every time it went into the full forward line and we were getting scores, we just didn't get it in there enough. That is the waste of possession that I was talking about.There were times when it must have been very frustrating for supporters to see us coming up the field with the ball and then just give silly passes or making poor decisions. That is frustrating to watch for everybody and there was so much of it happening all over the place. We tried the changes but there were just so many people making basic errors and it was just frustrating."Indeed, 2010 has been a frustrating year for Westmeath football fans and a win this afternoon against Laois, our great underage rivals over the past decade and a half, would be simply a massive boost to Lake County morale.