You have to be realistic and allow players to enjoy game
Westmeath boss Tom Cribbin takes a philosphical approach
FOR those who dismiss the Leinster football championship as a one-horse race, Tom Cribbin has a different take. It may well be, he admits, in his acceptance that Dublin are well ahead of the rest. But there is plenty enough to run for even if the price is chasing the champions down the final straight.
Taking Westmeath back to where they ended up last summer would not be a case of running hard to stand still for all kinds of reasons. For starters, they are coming off a spring where they made history by becoming the first team to make the trip from the League’s top tier to its bottom in successive seasons.
More than that, though, reaching finals has hardly become the kind of regular occurrence that can leave Westmeath folk underwhelmed.
‘Traditionally Westmeath would not be used to doing this. They have only ever been in four Leinster finals so to put a back-to-back Leinster final appearance would be a massive, massive thing. We don’t that have that tradition but these lads are very game,’ says the Westmeath manager.
It may well be that they are just finding their game after a difficult League, but Cribbin insists that he is not in the least unnerved about it, even though he admits that they should never have let it come to that.
A cocktail of things conspired to sink
Kildare have played a little bit Jekyll and Hyde in the last year or two
them, preparations interrupted by bad weather, players who went deep and hard into the winter with their clubs in all three Leinster club championships, and inevitable absentees.
But in terms of lost momentum, it hardly amounted to a trade-off that wiped out the value of last year’s thrilling run to the provincial final.
That served as a real eye-opener as to what really matters, he suggests.
‘The lads were able to put the spring behind them very quickly and concentrate on the Championship. They experienced that last year, and most of them were there when they went from Division 3 to 1 in the League and there was not near as much hype around the county. They know now that it is all about Championship football. That is why they were able to pick themselves up this year and getting a win in the Championship puts everything else behind you.’
They ticked that box last time out against Offaly, the kind of game which qualified as a stomach-check as they had to steel themselves when their neighbours came hard at them in the second half. There was much to take from it, not least the form of their leaders such as James Dolan, Kieran Martin and, of course, John Heslin.
They will have grabbed the eye of Cian O’Neill, who has rolled an ultradefensive set-up in response to his Kildare team’s unexpected defeat to Clare in the Division 3 League final.
‘People shouldn’t be surprised; all you have to do is look at the matches last Sunday: Tyrone and Cavan played very defensively, Galway and Mayo the same,’ Cribbin continues.
‘That is the way the game is now and until someone comes up with a new way, the defensive game-plan is the one people will try and perfect.
‘It is a hard thing to do and the one team that you need to have a very good defensive game-plan in place for is Dublin. But you have to be realistic and allow fellows to enjoy their football too.
‘A lot of players are not mad about playing under a defensive structure and most supporters are not over-keen on it either.’
But on the basis that it’s everyone’s dance of choice these days, and it always takes two to tango, Cribbin (right) admits that his team are a lot more practised in that gameplan than they were in run-up to last year’s Leinster final when he went public with his admission that he had two weeks to weave his team into a blanket. It proved remarkably resilient – even two quick-fire Dublin goals did not see it disintegrate and they were hailed for their competitiveness. Today, the bar is set higher and they must find a win against the county in which he resides. ‘I know from living here that they are confident. I know that they have a few injuries but they are confident that their panel is big and good enough to get them through. ‘They have played a little bit Jekyll and Hyde the last year or two. If they play like they played against Cork last year it will be very hard to beat them but, then again, they played a few games where they did not come anywhere near their potential and it just depends on the day which Kildare team we are playing. ‘But the bottom line is we have to make the best of our chance.’