Everyone’s saying that Sunday was embarrassing for football but let’s get real.
Sunday was embarrassing for Westmeath. No-one else.
Tom Cribbin’s side has gotten off scot-free from their humiliation at Croke Park because the country – or Twitter – descended into a championship restructure debate instead of picking the bones of a complete non-event.
Amidst the ‘something has to be done’ hysteria, the undercurrent theme was ‘poor Westmeath’. What else are they to do? That sort of bollocks.
But the team that took on Dublin in the Leinster semi-final were, frankly, a shambles. They were pathetic.
They had no game plan, they had no fight, and they seemingly had absolutely no desire to change any facet of their play when it clearly wasn’t working.
Last year, the Lake County matched Dublin for a half – they were applauded in at the break having trailed the champions by one point and they were sucker punched in the second period but they did everything they could.
This year, Carlow – 14 man Carlow – were as competitive as they could’ve been for as long as they possibly could’ve been and they made an expected demolition job fascinating for most of the game.
14-man Carlow lost to Dublin by 12 in the end. Westmeath lost to Dublin by 31.
And Westmeath wiped the floor with Division Four too. After drawing their first game, they won the next six with a combined total of 78 points to spare. They won the final by 13. They’re well above that level but their total no-show at Croker couldn’t have been forgiven any quicker by the masses who rushed to blame the GAA instead of poor Westmeath.
So, rather than asking what the hell went wrong for this team to implode like that, they were thrown a sympathetic bone because how could anyone possibly compete with Dublin?
No-one looked at why on earth they persisted with these nothing kickouts straight down the middle of the field that Dublin were gobbling up indiscriminately.
No-one asked why they didn’t lump any more ball in on top of John Heslin when he caught the first above O’Sullivan and scored.
No-one even rolled their eyes at their utter naivety to think that they didn’t need to set up defensively when they were never going to win enough primary possession to negate that necessity.
Okay, Westmeath couldn’t have beaten Dublin anyway but what they brought to the table was simply not good enough. It wasn’t acceptable.
And the lack of accountability that they’re allowed to have over that display isn’t good enough either.
On The Sunday Game highlights show, they showed interviews with 10 managers being asked about the idea of a B championship – obviously foreseeing that this topic would come up again like it always does.
Derry manager Damian Barton seemed offended at the suggestion that his county is a second-class county. The reality is, of course, that they are a second-rate side right now but the mentality in Derry would never be to go play in a Tommy Murphy Cup instead – or a Páidí Ó Sé Cup, as Joe Brolly thinks naming the tournament after a more recent legend would somehow change the thinking of it.
No, the mentality in Derry is very simple: Go get a better bloody team.
Go invest in underage structures and overhaul the problems and come back with a better team that’s able to compete. They don’t want to give up and they don’t blame anyone else for their problems at county level.
Get a better team.
There’s no reason why 130,000 people from Mayo are able to make up 15 players to compete with the greatest side ever but nobody else can.
There’s no reason why Monaghan can win Ulster titles with a population only bigger than Carlow, Leitrim and Longford but the rest of the country is allowed to fall into apathy because it’s not their fault.
Get a better team.
Why couldn’t a team like Westmeath eventually compete with the capital when they have done before?
Talking of restructuring doesn’t solve anything anyway but it’s also very damn pointless considering there’s already a new three-year structure still waiting to come into play in 2018.
Instead, somebody should ask why the hell Westmeath allowed that abomination to happen because that was not the laws of physics taking place. That was a complete rollover job that the people of Westmeath deserve better than.
Division Four champions or not, they’re much better than what they showed on Sunday and talk of restructures shouldn’t save them from fair analysis.
Westmeath’s performance and tactics – or lack of – discussed on the latest GAA Hour (from 48:00).
