This could go either of two ways
We would love to have seen the look on the faces of the journalists present after this sensational post-match interview by Westmeath manager Tom Cribbin. The Lake County suffered a second successive demotion this afternoon after a miserable Division Two league campaign ended with a defeat to Roscommon.
The Leinster side just won two of their seven games as they finished second from bottom of Division Two-a year after demotion from the top flight. Speaking afterwards to local radio station Midlands 103 Cribbin tore his players apart in a sensational interview.
He bemoaned the lack of leadership in the squad while also questioning if players were really committed to performing for their county,
‘There’s a few big players just not performing for us and I don’t know why or what’s wrong.
You need your big players to perform if you’re going to deliver. When you’re seeing the likes of young Killian Daly as probably one of your best players, you’re expecting poor young Shane Dempsey to come on and win matches when you have senior players, that’s f***ing not on.
Excuse my language, but this isn’t going to happen. These big players are not standing up. I don’t know why or what’s going on with them. You saw the other lads and they just out everything on the line,lads that are general average players. But the few big lads who should be standing out leading,f**king lay down. and that’s the real trouble with this team. There’s hard questions to be asked and answered in the next week or two because we may just have to go on without a clatter of these players and start working on these young lads for the future.’
Cribbin is obviously very angry after seeing his side fail to perform but an interview like this and coming out publicly slamming his players probably won’t go down too well with the players. Westmeath now face a long wait until their opening game of the Leinster championship, so it should be interesting to see over the coming days if there will be more to emerge from within the camp as to why their league form was so poor
You can hear the full interview and the frustration in Cribben’s voice below,
