Bulfin keen to move on with managing senior hurlers

New Westmeath senior hurling manager Seoirse Bulfin is excited about the prospect of managing a division one hurling county and is keen to build on the progress made by his predecessor Joe Fortune over the last three seasons.

Bulfin has plenty of knowledge of the Westmeath players having come up against them in his coaching role with Wexford manager Davy Fitzgerald in the recent past.

“I've come up against them - I would have seen them up close and from further afield. The one thing I would say is they all hurl and they’re very athletic. There’s loads of potential there and there are a lot of good young players coming through from the U20 team, the likes of Rian Holding, David O’Reilly, David Williams, Darragh McCormack - there’s a lot of good talent there,” he enthused.

The Limerick man was in TEG Cusack Park on Sunday to take in the intermediate championship game involving Southern Gaels and Brownstown and the senior match between Clonkill and Castletown Geoghegan. He was impressed with the standard on display.

Bulfin acknowledged that he faces a challenge with facilities in the county, just as Fortune did in his term in charge and the team had to make the weekly trek to Abbotstown, Dublin for training.

While there was opposition to his appointment from some quarters, the Bruff club man said he respects people's right to air their views, but he now hopes to move forward with the challenge at hand.

“Anyone can have an opinion, but I would be hoping that people would spare their judgement until we get going with the players,” he said.

“This is a very democratic organisation, so everyone's entitled to their opinion. What I would say is, from my point of view, I can only focus on what I can control and for me, it's making contact with the players, getting to see as many matches as possible. I will probably look to have a couple of trial matches, maybe in October, for guys who wouldn't have been seen in the past."

Bulfin said the response of the players has been extremely positive.

“I’ve had some very good conversations with players; they want to play and they're happy with things. Obviously there are still a couple of minor things to resolve: it will be a couple years before there's a centre of excellence, things like that, and just trying to maybe settle on a base, or a couple of bases, in Westmeath.

“I can only control what I can control - everyone’s entitled to their opinion and I’ll just be pushing forward with my plans for Westmeath for the next couple of years.”