Connaughton feels Westmeath's defensive display was average

Westmeath manager Pádraic Connaughton was disappointed to lose Saturday’s first round tie but vowed to have his team geared up for a crucial game against Wexford.

Connaughton felt Cork had the upper hand when they ran at the Westmeath cover and he described Westmeath's defensive display as average.

“I thought we were porous at times, to be honest. When we got turned by Cork, there was a huge lack of energy, for whatever reason. That's up to me to fix,” he observed.

“I thought we gradually grew into the game; we seemed to lack a bit of confidence earlier on for some reason. When we did get close to Cork, their whole persona changed and they realised they could win it.”

“We finished very strongly the last seven or eight minutes. We controlled the game but we probably had left ourselves too much to do. We didn't turn up in the first 15 minutes. Cork were just a better team at that stage. We had two or three goal opportunities that we had taken in the league and we seemed to have popped them over the bar for some reason.

“We have to start better the next week against Wexford. Wexford are a good team; we are away from home; we'll try and fix what went wrong during the week.”

Connaughton feels his side’s first touch will need to be better.

“We had a lot of handling errors, even in the second half. I'm not digressing from the first half. In the second half, we got an abundance of ball in and we just dropped ball after ball after ball,” he remarked.

He is confident his side can bounce back, however.

“Their heads are down, but we know we're still there. Three come out of the group. We have to perform next week. If we get a result next week, we're right back in it. It's championship. At the end of the day, you have to turn up in the championship. In the first half today, we didn't turn up.

“We have to be positive, and we will be . They're a positive group and they're proactive. We'll get plenty of recovery into them. We'll do a lot of analysis on Tuesday night and find out where things went wrong. Our heads will be up. We'll get on the bus to Wexford and we'll be looking for a win.”