McCabe hopes players can learn from ‘little mistakes’

Westmeath senior football manager Dermot McCabe is anxious that his side find a way to get their first victory on the board.

After last Sunday’s 2-29 to 2-21 defeat by Monaghan, they are facing a crucial away game against Cork on Saturday week and McCabe realises a third defeat will make survival in Division 2 a tough task.

It was put to him after Sunday’s loss that Westmeath have shown lots of potential in their first two games, scoring 0-18 against Louth and 2-21 against Monaghan, but he stressed the importance of backing that up with a positive result. He feels that if Westmeath can learn from the mistakes of the first two rounds, they will make a greater impact.

“I don’t know about that (moral victories). I probably want to win games; to get two points. We have to look at those little mistakes and those little errors and see where we can correct those. We’ll analyse it hard over the next two weeks, and we’ll be prepared to give it everything,” he said.

“There’s huge effort from the players, they’re working extremely hard. We’re probably giving them a lot of information, maybe changing the style of training and all that type of stuff. That’s a lot for them to take in, but hopefully every day is a learning day and we can prove that in the days and months ahead.”

McCabe acknowledged that his side’s mistakes cost them dearly against a Monaghan side that had defeated Cavan in their first outing.

“Against a team of the calibre of Monaghan, when you make a few little simple mistakes, they punish you for those. And probably those times where we were on the attack - probably our kickouts were difficult as they won a lot of breaks in the first half - and we were caught out of shape then, and they executed scores from those. So that was disappointing,” he observed.

“We had other opportunities, probably our last pass just caused us trouble, and then we were out of shape. We sort of got back on track a little bit and then to concede that goal just before half-time made things difficult.”

Westmeath have lost a lot of experienced players from last year and were forced to field on Sunday without Ray Connellan and Brian Guerin, injured in the lead-up to the game.

“From the last day we lost our two midfielders, they picked up little niggles during the week, and I suppose on top of what we lost, it’s very hard for maybe the players that are there to sort of manage that as well. Ray (Connellan) and Brian (Guerin) had big games for us in the first round, so it’s disappointing to lose those. I think we never got to grips with our own kickouts in the first 25 minutes, and that caused us trouble,” he said.

On the new rules, McCabe took issue with the two-point scores. “Smarter men than me has put those rules together, I suppose. But I probably would really question the two points. I can’t really see what the situation is there, that something a yard in or a yard out from a line would be two points. It would be a strange one for me. Because with 11 v 11 back, it’s very hard to tag runners, very hard to tag movers, so I’d probably question that a little bit,” he remarked.

He feels the new 3 v 3 has benefits for all teams. “If we’re using it right, it should be a bonus for us, the same as it should be for any team, and that’s the way we would look at it,” he said.

Looking ahead, he suggested there may be further adjustments to the new playing rules.

“I would say that there will be a tweak or two. I would see that some things may change,” he observed.

The new manager said his side is placing a big focus on attacking football. “We work quite a bit on attacking and trying to getting into good positions and getting that sort of movement, and the lads are applying that in the games. Some of the players are new to it; this is their first day at Clones. There’s a little bit of nervous energy, that last pass; and then you’re punished. We don’t want those errors happening and we have to correct them,” he added.