REALITY BITES
People may be keen to see Westmeath attack the Dubs in Croke Park but Tom Cribbin is well aware of how it may backfire
ONE recurring theme in sport is that it is not simply about winning – the manner of winning is just as important.
When Jack O’Connor took over the Kerry senior football job for the 2004 season, he was given a pointed reminder of a county’s rich tradition by selector and general grandee Johnny Culloty: ‘His word to me always is that we have to win and we have to win with a bit of style, Kerry style.’
Given the manner in which Gaelic football has evolved – Kerry’s set-up in the 2014 All-Ireland final against Donegal a case in point – that conversation looks positively quaint now. So too O’Connor surreptitiously scouring the Ulster Council website for tackling drills. Daring to reimagine Paul Galvin as a southern answer to a northern question. Yet few talk about the art of losing. This week, Westmeath football manager Tom Cribbin has been cast in the role of Yossarian, the central character in the novel Catch 22, which has come to represent an existential quandary in which a person is bedevilled at either turn.
The bottom line of two Leinster final appearances against a Dublin team using the game as a springboard to All-Ireland honours makes from grim enough reading: 2-13 to just 0-6 in 2015; 2-19 to 0-10 in 2016.
And so the tide of opinion has it that Westmeath need to go out and play a bit of football this afternoon against a team chasing immortality in the game in terms of a three-in-arow of All-Irelands. Like the band striking up a tune even as the ship goes down.
The pressure is coming from all angles – within and without the camp. Here’s one of Westmeath’s attacker-in-chiefs Kieran Martin: ‘We’re at our best when we’re running and attacking, so let’s just go for it. We’ve nothing to lose.’
Or Dessie Dolan, who is being inducted into the Leinster Hall of Fame this weekend: ‘What is there to fear? We’ve lost to them by 13 and 15 points playing a particular way. If that’s the case again then at least play to the team’s strengths and attack them.’ Former manager Tomás Ó Flatharta warmed to the same theme: ‘I think they should go for an attacking style, instead of defending... because it gave them no rewards at all to do that.
‘Are they going to beat Dublin? Probably not. But let’s go and give supporters something to shout about here.’
Cribbin injected a dose of realism into the debate given that 23 placings separate the Division 1 winners from the Division 4 title holders, judging by the spring.
‘There’s no point in me telling the players that everyone wants you to have a go. What’s having a go? Going 15 on 15 and seeing if we are as good in every position as the All-Ireland champions the last two years? What does “have a go” mean?
‘You have to be realistic. If we had 15 players the same quality as Dublin maybe we’d be the ones with two All-Ireland titles but we don’t have them. Westmeath have only one Leinster title in their lifetime.
‘We have to be very practical and see what is the best way we can set up our team to play to our full potential that might keep us in the game towards the end. Maybe then we have an opportunity to have a go and see if we can win it.’
So. Park the bus, then?
There is something more scarring than losing by 14 points – that’s losing by 27. That was the ignominy the Westmeath players, including Dolan, had to live with after the 2009 Leinster semi-final. The margin of defeat in the Division 1 National League meeting not long before that was 5-22 to 0-10. What is there to fear indeed. Cribbin’s Westmeath have been doing a lot right these past two summers. A blind eye has been turned to the fact that no previous Westmeath team had ever reached consecutive Leinster finals – until the last two years. No previous Westmeath team had ever taken the scalp of long-time conquerors Meath in the Championship – until the first of those unlikely odysseys.
Despite the harsh veneer to the final scoreboard, the score at halftime in last year’s Leinster final saw frustrated Dublin sneak in a point ahead, 0-7 to 0-6, the game being played on Westmeath’s terms. Dublin went up through the gears after the restart to settle it as a contest.
Long-time commentator Eugene McGee took a dim view of Carlow’s park-the-bus mentality in the quarter-final against Dublin. Plenty others took a dim view of McGee for daring to call it ‘Imitation Football’.
He had a point though. How many men behind the ball is enough? Carlow brought 13 behind the ball pretty much any time Dublin gained possession. There was no denying it was an ugly game to watch.
Which goes back to that delicate balance of trying to set up to mind the house – and still play with some sense of joy.
Compare Kildare 2016 versus Kildare 2017. In the Leinster semi-final defeat by Westmeath last year, a defensive system was being modelled that looked as if it was being road-tested to keep the score down against Dublin.
Cian O’Neill has a long-standing reputation as one of the smartest coaches and thinkers in the game. Yet he recently admitted that he was physically ill for days in the wake of that performance.
Kildare have approached the game in a very different way this year and reaped the rewards. They attacked Meath from the start in this year’s semi-final. Well-drilled and well-structured defensively, there was a sense of release, of the players taking real joy in the game.
It’s not quite that simple though in Westmeath’s case when facing clearly far superior opposition.
The challenge for Cribbin is to allow talented players like Paul Sharry, John Heslin and Kieran Martin the latitude to showcase their talents – while trying to keep the score down.
‘You can’t become way better than you actually are overnight, just because you are playing the All-Ireland champions and you want to. You’re as good as you are and we have to devise a system and a game plan that we think we can implement,’ Cribbin reasons.
‘In theory, you could sit down and draw a fabulous game plan that would possibly beat the Dubs, but do you then have the players to implement that plan?’
Judging by the odds, today is as much about the art of losing.