Can Westmeath footballers take a major scalp as Derry await

By Gerry Buckley

One of my favourite films is Double Jeopardy, a member of an elite club of movies which I will re-watch any time it appears on television, and I still enjoy when the smug ‘baddy’ gets his comeuppance.

The film has come to my mind umpteen times in recent weeks as the word ‘jeopardy’ has been bandied about incessantly by Gaelic games pundits and scribes, or more specifically the term, ‘the absence of jeopardy’. The general consensus is that the GAA’s new football structure in the race for the Sam Maguire Cup is overly long-winded, with 24 games needed to eliminate four reasonably obvious counties after the seeded draw has been made.

Westmeath’s memorable Tailteann Cup win in its inaugural year of 2022 (am I the only one who thinks the tier two competition is slowly but surely losing its gloss since?) secured qualification for the championship proper last year where the Lake County more than justified their inclusion. Indeed, it is surely not being mean-spirited to suggest that Westmeath acquitted themselves a lot better than neighbours Meath have done this year after following suit as Tailteann Cup champions in 2023. That proud county looks like it has a long way to go to reach the heady heights of the Sean Boylan era.

Westmeath's second qualification came via winning Division 3 this year, and a few very lucky escapes in provincial ties outside their control in April. And it has to be added that, regardless of how next Saturday night’s do-or-die clash in Newry with Division 1 champions Derry goes, Westmeath have been very worthy diners at the big ball’s top table to date in 2024.

Having said - and meant - all of that, I can’t but reiterate my oft-written and oft-spoken dislike of (contempt for?) the dreaded old 'moral victories', with the score standing at 1-1 in that regard for Westmeath's 2023/2024 campaigns. Armagh last year and Galway last Sunday week were excruciatingly let off the hook when the winning post (or at least the drawing post?) was within sight. Indeed, were it not for work pressure in the immediate aftermath of the Tribesmen’s flattering four-point win in TEG Cusack Park, I would have exited the press box to shout “hear, hear” when I heard a local punter express his disgust at the latest 'moral victory' he had witnessed.

Accordingly, it would seem to be a reasonable ambition for this lifelong Westmeath fan to have a burning desire to see a momentous win for Dessie Dolan’s talented troops against a major power in what is the eleventh hour of many careers of the squad which will be named for the Páirc Esler clash at 7pm this Saturday.

Many Lake County Gaels have expressed their dismay at the time and venue fixed for the fixture by the powers-that-be last week, and their frustration is understandable. But it is still a great problem to have when several counties with greater tradition than Westmeath have only Tailteann Cup games facing them, and in some cases no games at all!

Frankly, the sudden demise of next Saturday’s opponents is hard to fathom. All the talk after the National Leagues was of three counties being miles ahead of the chasing pack i.e. the more or less annual big two of Dublin and Kerry, with Derry as a genuine threat after winning the league to follow on from a brace of Ulster titles (and the Anglo Celt Cup is seldom retained).

At that stage, they were priced as a close third behind the Dubs and the Kingdom, and it would have been inconceivable then that they would be available at a whopping 20/1 in the early days of June, with Galway and Armagh (yes, Westmeath are in the group of death), Donegal and Mayo, all leapfrogging Mickey Harte’s troops in the seldom-wrong odds offered by the bookmakers.

The latter was never flavour of the month in the eyes of many Derry fans after his appointment, being conceived as an out-and-out Tyrone man, with the aberration of a spell in Louth being ignored – and haven’t they done very well under Ger Brennan since Harte hastily jumped the Wee County ship? The pressure is now firmly on the Glencull man whose job spec was surely on the lines of, ‘Win Sam for us – and quickly’. Of course, they still can win Sam, and if you think so, get those 20/1 odds – and quickly! But it seems far-fetched that after three championship losses – and bad losses at that – Conor Glass and co considered can still be as serious contenders for the blue riband of Gaelic football.

Despite often operating at different levels of the game, Westmeath have a mini-history with Derry, starting with the never-to-be-forgotten All-Ireland minor football win of 1995 in Croke Park.

Nine years later, Westmeath's historic Delaney Cup success was tainted somewhat by an avoidable All-Ireland quarter-final loss to the men in red and white, two sucker punch goals leading to a 2-9 to 0-13 loss. Westmeath could have done with Shane Deering on board to replicate his rugby tackle on Johnny McBride – the blackest of black card offences before they were introduced – when Enda Muldoon and Paddy Bradley were bearing down on goals. Six years later, Derry edged out the home side in Cusack Park by 0-13 to 1-7 in an All-Ireland qualifier.

Westmeath's most famous win against Derry undoubtedly came in 1994 in Enniskillen in a National League quarter-final when the All-Ireland champions for the first (and, to date, only) time were sensationally defeated by Mattie Kerrigan’s charges in Brewster Park. Those of us present ignored the rain to joyously celebrate a win which was the main talking point in sport nationwide that Easter Sunday night 30 years ago.

Now wouldn’t be just great if Westmeath were the headline news next Saturday night again, rather than receiving the usual platitudes of ‘gallant’, ‘wholehearted’, ‘brave’, ‘battling’, ‘gutsy’, ‘enthusiastic’, ‘plucky’ and so on after another narrow defeat? “Hear, hear” to that.