Cautious Maroons downplay status as favourites

They may now be three Allianz NFL divisions below Westmeath and outsiders for Sunday’s Leinster SFC match in Mullingar, but a home game against Carlow is the type of game that could go very wrong if Westmeath approach it in a cavalier way.

That’s the verdict of Lake County captain Kieran Gavin who, speaking at Cusack Park on Friday, said that he and his colleagues have huge respect for the Dolmen County, who will be out to cause an upset.

Managed by Kildare legend Anthony Rainbow, and boasting a capable attack spearheaded by Brian Murphy (who kicked 0-24 in the league), the men from the southeast also come to Mullingar with the benefit of four and a half years of coaching by former Westmeath boss Luke Dempsey, who left the Dr Cullen Park setup last year.

“They’ll know a bit about Westmeath, but we’ll know a bit about Carlow,” Gavin said, relishing the Lake County’s first home championship match of this millennium.

“It’s going to be great occasion. Hopefully it won’t get to us; we’ll just go out there and focus on the football. Carlow are going to be flying, and if we put ourselves in their position and they were in our position, we’d be coming up here looking for a scalp.

“So that’s the way Carlow are going to approach it. They’re going to give it one hell of a shot, and we just have to match them for energy and work rate, and hopefully the scores will materialise and we’ll come out on top.”

Gavin is back in the running for places after missing the league final through injury, and although unsure if he’ll be back in the starting XV, he’s happy that such huge competition for places is a major trump card going into the championship.

“It was just a niggly injury. I didn’t want to chance it. So if I’m playing well enough, I’ll be picked for next week; but if I’m not, hopefully I’ll come on and do the job,” he said.

“There’s massive competition for places. With an injury, some other lad steps in; John Gaffey’s stepped in at full back there, and he’s probably doing a better job than I’ve been doing at the moment! So nothing’s guaranteed.”

Manager Pat Flanagan, meanwhile, underlined that the three league tiers now between Westmeath and the Barrowsiders will mean nothing come championship day.

“Carlow may be written off by everyone else, but they certainly won’t be written off by anybody in our camp,” he said, anticipating a dangerous 70 minutes on Sunday.

“We should know that better than anybody. We were written off at the start of the year; nobody gave us a chance of winning any games in Division 2, last year or this year. Nobody gave us a chance of getting out of Division 3 two years ago, so we’ve come a long way against all the odds.

“So we know that Carlow can come up here and go all the way against the odds, and we know that we have to be prepared and at our very best if we’re going to succeed.

“We set out our stall at the start of the year to get out of Division 2. That was goal number one. We drew a line under that last weekend; it’s completely over and done with, and it’s all about this Sunday and our next goal, which is to win a Leinster championship.

“To do that, we have to get over Carlow, and we can think no further than that. We can’t live on what we’ve achieved in the last number of months; that’s not going to solve our problem next Sunday.”