Can Cavan drag Westmeath into the trenches?

Preview

Kevin Egan

One of the less talked-about side effects of Westmeath’s historic Leinster championship win this Summer is that they’ve just made life an awful lot harder for those Spartan managers and coaches out there.

You know the ones – they believe in the virtue of sacrifice and grind over a long period of time, and how it will yield gradual, inch-by-inch improvement, eventually taking you to the mountain top.

Think of Kieran McGeeney in Armagh, and his philosophy of players often serving a year or two in the senior panel before they even get close to getting meaningful minutes on the field in the league or championship.

Think of all those strength and conditioning coaches that come in with three, four and five-year plans that must be completed before a player could even contemplate the idea of trying to tackle a Kerry or Donegal man.

Imagine trying to sell that to an inter-county panel this coming October, only to be met with the response: “Can’t we just skip all that, and do what Westmeath did?”

Now before this is all dismissed as the bitter rantings of an Offaly native who grew up six miles from the Westmeath border, and someone who will forever be scarred by that county’s Leinster win in 2004, we’re not saying for a minute that Mark McHugh took charge of a collection of players with no talent and a love of crisps.

Yes, I am bitter, partially because I’m wired that way, but also because that Westmeath victory 22 years ago started with a first-round 0-11 to 0-10 win over Offaly in Croke Park, where one of Westmeath’s points was clearly wide. For good measure, I crashed my car on the way up to Dublin that day. But that’s not the point.

The facts of the situation are undeniable. By the start of April, this was a Westmeath group that lost three games in the third tier of this year’s National Football League. They exited last year’s Tailteann Cup at the hands of Wicklow, they hadn’t won a game in the much-maligned Leinster Football Championship since 2022, and out of the 23 players that saw action against Dublin in this year’s Leinster final, a mere four had played in a provincial decider for the county previously, either at senior, minor or U20.

And as if that wasn’t enough, the injury Gods mocked and taunted the Lake men during their Leinster run. The battle for the goalkeeper’s jersey was a tough contest all year, and McHugh had settled on Conor McCormack as the better option than Jason Daly, only for McCormack to suffer a season-ending injury after just eight minutes of the Meath game.

The threat posed by Ronan Wallace and Matthew Whittaker from the wing-back positions has been undeniable, to the point that the Irish News ‘Monday Club’ podcast cited Wallace as a contender for selection on their All-Ireland XV, with one contributor selecting the Westmeath captain for his team. Whittaker, for his part, was incredible in the Sigerson Cup and with his club (Tubberclair) in the Westmeath and Leinster IFC last year, and he carried that form into the inter-county campaign.

Yet both men have had to manage niggly injuries over the past couple of months, with Whittaker’s playing time heavily restricted. Admittedly, three points from Wallace over 80 minutes against Dublin would suggest he’s out of the woods.

But if you asked anyone from 31 counties which Westmeath player would they want to steal for their own team, it’s a safe bet the vast majority would pick out Luke Loughlin, their top scorer and chief two-point threat.

He, too, played his last football for the year against Meath before leaving the fray after suffering a season-ending injury, one which should – on paper – have scuppered the county’s chances of upsetting the odds against Kildare and Dublin.

So what has McHugh done in the face of all that? There are several answers, but if they were all to be thrown in the one pot and boiled into a single soup, the dominant flavour would be that of sheer, relentless positive energy. A less saccharine version of ‘if you believe in yourself, you can achieve anything!’ - and only slightly less.

If ever a provincial title was manifested by the power of unflinching belief in the face of overwhelming evidence from reality, this was the one.

Westmeath did not entertain the thought that time had to be served before silverware could be deserved. Instead, they went up to Kilcar to have a training weekend and a weekend of worship at the altar of Jim McGuinness, a move that has been hailed as a turning point. McHugh fully embraced the ‘next man up’ philosophy in the face of the team’s injury woes, and one after another, heroes emerged out of the long grass.

Where to begin? Well, Shane Corcoran and Brían Cooney, two dependable and reliable players who would have put in a lot of hard yards over a combined 15-odd years of inter-county football without appearing on highlight reels too often, delivered crucial ‘Goal of the Season’ nominations against Meath and Kildare, suddenly channelling the spirit of David Clifford.

Senan and Tadhg Baker, sons of Clare hurling legend Ollie Baker but neither a nailed-on starter at the beginning of the season, now look like footballers that can impact games every bit as strongly as their famous father. Kevin O’Sullivan, despite still being in the earlier stages of his career, has embraced the role of the team’s enforcer and guardian, and so far at least, he has managed to play that part without having his time on the field ended by a referee.

And then in the middle of all that, we have the decision to bring back in John Heslin, in the ultimate slap in the face to S&C coaches all over the land. The veteran attacker has put in his time on training fields down the years but the notion of bringing a player back into a county panel two weeks before a provincial final and then giving him half an hour of playing time is tough to square with the concept of needing to put in a hard pre-season in the muck and rain.

God help all those coaches who meet with the rebuttal that “if Heslin can do it, why can’t I?” next year.

So what can Cavan do, when faced with a group who simply refuse to be shackled by the chains of what should be realistic, as they prepare to play in front of a packed house full of buoyant home fans in a party mood?

Well, on the opposite side of Lough Sheelin, once you cross over into the parish of Mullahoran, the vibes are very different. The sun may be shining this week, but in footballing terms, there’s nothing only black cumulonimbus packing out the Cavan sky. And maybe, just maybe, Cavan’s route to prosperity might mean leaning into that.

For inspiration, one only has to look at last weekend’s contest between Tyrone and Roscommon in the Hyde.

The Rossies were floating on air after winning Connacht with a young team of freewheeling speedsters, and in came Tyrone to slowly suck the life out of them, breaking their minds and bodies in a fashion that Cavan people have seen firsthand all too often.

The passing of Frank McGuigan may have given the Red Hand men a cause and their three stylish goals were the abiding memories, but it was a game where Tyrone prevailed purely on the back of their ability to suck the life out of the party.

They controlled the ball, and as if to leave the deepest scar possible, their crucial score (Mattie Donnelly’s late goal) came from a Roscommon error - Conor Carroll’s misplaced kickout. Roscommon wanted to bring sunshine and joy, Tyrone were having none of it.

As templates go, that one should be one that Cavan can follow.

There would absolutely be a certain poetry in Dermot McCabe, who oversaw a Westmeath season where the Lake County were competitive and yet couldn’t buy a stroke of luck, coming to Mullingar once again and dragging the free-flowing, free-scoring midlanders into yet another dogfight, with a side-order of impending doom.

There are games where tactics and talent make all the difference, but rarely has there been a contest between two counties who, while evenly matched on paper, approach the fixture in such different places psychologically.

Westmeath may have home advantage when it comes to the venue, but for Cavan to come through this contest, they might need to make it physical, slow, dour, and abrasive.

That needs to be the terrain on which they play. They don’t need to leave their darkness behind; they need to feed it, nurture it, and bring it into battle. Cold, hard, brutal reality is the one opponent Mark McHugh has avoided so far this year, and it’s something that Cavan football knows all about right now.