Tricky assignment in Belfast for Dolan’s unbeaten footballers
“How many more of these curate’s egg performances can we get away with?”
This succinct query from a pal/fellow-Westmeath fan last Sunday night opened what has become a standard phone call a couple of hours after Lake County games in both codes. On this occasion, it related to the footballers’ very hard-earned three-point win against Limerick in TEG Cusack Park.
The ‘curate’s egg’ was an expression used regularly by the late and incomparable Paddy Flanagan in his widely-read ‘Gaelic Gleanings’ column. I read same from childhood and vividly recall initially looking up the expression (in pre-Google days) in my school dictionary. ‘Good in spots’, is what it meant, and I assume that no referendum has been held in PC times to remove or alter its meaning since!
Westmeath were, yet again, good in spots against the Shannonsiders, thankfully enough spots to keep up a winning habit which was a rarity when this then-hirsute youngster would wander in every Sunday, carrying no dictionaries but just hope in my heart, from the Longford Road to my beloved Cusack Park to watch maroon and white-clad teams lose far more often than win. Accordingly, it would be churlish in the extreme to be critical when Westmeath are on an admirable winning streak.
However, Westmeath have yet to string anything remotely close to a consistent 70-minute performance together, and have three difficult assignments left to seal promotion to Division 2. Westmeath are, frankly, very much proponents of modern Gaelic football, and new CLG Uachtarán, Jarlath Burns, whom we all wish well in his onerous role, has his work cut out if he is to remove much of the pukiness (hardly in my schoolboy dictionary?) which permeates the current game. No less an expert than Jim Gavin will chair Burns’s new committee in this regard.
Dolan, who openly conceded that last Sunday was “not a pretty game”, has an onerous task to seal the promotion deal, especially given the ongoing unavailability of injured marquee scorers John Heslin and Luke Loughlin.
Another marquee duo, Ronan O’Toole (what a lovely footballer he is) and Kieran Martin, got Westmeath out of jail last Sunday, and it is surely time now for some others to step up to the plate and do the same. The Maryland man, in particular, is facing a challenge from Father Time. Then again, Martin more or less legally bulldozes all on-pitch opponents out of the way and he may well do so also with that dreaded off-pitch adversary, Mother Time’s husband!
The first of three tricky assignments is in Corrigan Park next Sunday (throw-in 1pm) and while very little in life is certain, we can predict with absolute certainty that Westmeath will not defeat the Glensmen by 31 points, as amazingly happened in Mullingar almost exactly a year ago.
Andy McEntee’s men offered no resistance that afternoon, but they definitely will on Sunday, with their mid-table position meaning that they can’t afford to drop any more points if they are to retain realistic promotion aspirations. The aforementioned Heslin ran riot in TEG Cusack Park on March 5 last year. Again the hope is, as stated above, that a Heslin-in-waiting will pop up soon. Ideally, in Belfast!
Saffron and white-clad sides have faced Westmeath 17 times to date in the NFL. Their respective records are identical – eight wins apiece, with one game drawn in 1980.
Remarkably, given the latter stat, the Lake County had lost all seven games (and drawn once) prior to yours truly’s first trip to Casement Park as a fan in 1994 (Westmeath's first victory). My lasting memory of same will be my almost-11-year-old daughter beside me asking: “Daddy, as this is part of the UK, will they play ‘God Save the Queen’ as the anthem?” I instantly replied, “If they do, duck!” There is no ducking the importance of next Sunday’s game!
Westmeath v Antrim, NFL results this century:
9/4/2000, St Loman’s (Mullingar), Antrim 0-12 Westmeath 1-7
16/2/2003, Belfast, Westmeath 0-15 Antrim 2-7
12/3/2006, Cusack Park, Westmeath 3-10 Antrim 1-12
27/3/2022, Belfast, Westmeath 1-13 Antrim 0-12
5/3/2023, TEG Cusack Park, Westmeath 4-27 Antrim 0-8.
Lack of coverage of hurlers 'a thundering disgrace'
Said daughter married a Tipp man almost two decades after her innocent comment in a venue set for a massive refurbishment for Euro 2028 (this could be very tricky for Windsor Park devotees), and that romance was not long on the go when she rang me one day from Thurles, announcing: “I’ve just been at my first game of hurling.” Flabbergasted, I replied: “What about all the Westmeath games you attended with me?”, and she responded: “Ah no, Joe says they were not proper hurling games!”
Despite Tipperary’s hurling ‘snobbery’, an unexpected few paragraphs about this scribe in last Saturday’s very well-constructed programme in FBD Semple Stadium was humbling. Thank you very sincerely, Seamus O’Doherty. However, what pleased me even more was another totally committed and skilful display of 'proper' hurling by Joe Fortune’s troops, with the bonus of seeing some vital cogs returning at a crucial stage of the year.
Jarlath Burns is very much associated with Gaelic football, with hurling very much a low-key sport in the Orchard County. Let us hope, however, that he devotes equal time to both the big and small balls.
A good start would be to ensure that the Westmeaths of this world get proper television coverage. It was mind-boggling to see zero, repeat zero, footage of Westmeath's outstanding display against Tipperary on Allianz League Sunday.
To borrow the words uttered here in Mullingar which caused an Irish president to resign in 1976, that is a thundering disgrace!