Westmeath manager targets league promotion and Leinster U-21 title

Q: Pat, we all know you are an Offaly man, but you have very strong Westmeath roots. Pat Flanagan: Yes, my parents were from Westmeath, my father from Rochfortbridge and my mother from Delvin. Indeed, I have five sisters and two brothers and every one of them was born in Westmeath bar me. Q: You were also asked by Tomás †Flatharta to become a senior selector for Westmeath in 2009. PF: That's right. Obviously, it wasn't the most successful campaign. We lost all our league matches. We got over Wicklow in the championship, but I think the worst day in my life was when Dublin hammered us in the semi-final. Q: Having said that, when Tomás left you were probably hopeful of taking over as manager. PF: I was after working my way up from the time I was at Clara, after winning eight championships in various grades. The way I am, I try to do the best I can and the best I can would have been to move on to inter-county level. Yes, I did put my name forward and I was extremely disappointed not to get it, to be totally honest. However, that was the decision of the County Board at the time and you have to accept these things. You move on and I came back and took over Clara and we won the senior championship, which was some consolation for not getting the Westmeath job. Q: But after Brendan Hackett's brief reign, you were happy to take over on a temporary basis for the 2010 championship. PF: Yes, the opportunity arose and I definitely saw it as a good chance both for myself and for Westmeath to progress. The stats would have said otherwise, but I had great belief in the players, even at that stage. I thought that we could turn things round. We did to a certain degree by beating Wicklow, but unfortunately we struggled against Louth due to a combination of a lot of things on the day, and the lead-up to it. The biggest single issue on the day was a lack of confidence, I think. Q: As we all know, Louth were robbed in the final. So, as it transpired, maybe Westmeath could have actually won the Leinster title this year? PF: We would have gained an awful lot of confidence from the Louth game had we won, particularly not playing as well as we could have. We got very close, despite a couple of decisions on the day which didn't help us. If we had got over Louth, we would have put up a very good fight and possibly won that game against Meath. Q: You've brought in two new selectors, Tom Darcy and Larry Giles, both very well respected former Westmeath players. PF: What I wanted to do was get people involved who were totally involved with football all their lives and also who would hold the respect of people, especially modern players. Tom and Larry fit into that category. I would have known Tom from playing in challenge games in Offaly and he worked in Clara for a while also. Obviously, Larry played for Westmeath for a number of years also. I wanted a guy like Tom who could do defensive coaching, and Larry who can work with the forwards. It's not just selectors I was after, but guys who could coach as well in those areas. Q: And Trevor Smullen is coming in to do the physical training. PF: Yes, Trevor played with Longford for 11 years, so he has a good degree of knowledge in the inter-county scene and he is a fitness instructor as well. He has a very good background and showed a huge willingness to join the team. I know Trevor well as we work together in the Community Training Centre in Mullingar. He has developed programmes for the guys for gyms and I think everybody is very happy with them. Q: We are now in the middle of the two-month period when collective training is banned. What are your thoughts on that particular ban? PF: It's difficult to understand what it's all about, to be honest. You have a number of guys who are in college and are training and playing away as normal. You also have the Garrycastle lads who only finished last week and obviously they would have been training up to then. The idea of this burnout thing probably needs to be revisited and see if there is a different means that can be applied, because certainly it doesn't make a whole pile of sense that you could have maybe 50 per cent of your panel training with colleges and the other 50 not meant to do anything. Q: How do you envisage the O'Byrne Cup? PF: Well, it's an opportunity to see players. There are a number of players playing with their colleges in the tournament, but it's a chance to see other guys and how they will perform. I spoke to Larry, Tom and Trevor and we went with a panel that we thought was good enough, adding players from last year, rather than going and having trial games. In my opinion, it is very difficult for a guy to show himself in a trial game. Basically what we did is we drew up a panel from the year gone by and we've added fellows to that. Q: As you know, the backbone of the side in recent years are all over 30. Have any players formally retired? PF: Well, Martin Flanagan and Damien Healy told me that they would be finishing after we lost to Derry in the Qualifiers. Both were tremendous servants. Damien was travelling from Galway and Martin was working night shifts. John Keane has serious knee problems and is finding it difficult to sleep by times with pains in his knees and he has decided to opt out also. Derek Heavin is still recovering from the serious injury he picked up against Louth and we will have to see if it is possible for him to come back. Q: Westmeath have a very poor underage record for a decade now, certainly at minor level. Can we expect to see new talent emerging at senior level? PF: Westmeath is a small county with limited resources but the under-21 team reached this year's Leinster final and the semi-final a year earlier, which a lot of people seem to forget, losing both narrowly to Dublin. You would imagine that a number of those guys would be coming through. Also, Brendan Murtagh, who is better known as a hurler, has joined the panel and will be a major benefit to it. He is a big man and is very interested in training. The likes of Andrew Whitney and Simon Quinn, those guys could make an impact too. Q: Does being in Division 3 give you a chance to experiment little more than if Westmeath was in Division 1 or 2? PF: I believe you need to have a nucleus of senior players and introduce guys gradually. If you put six or seven lads in at the one time, it can destroy some players. A lot of the young lads we have can develop playing with the more seasoned players. We will certainly be introducing some new faces from time to time. The likes of Frank Boyle and Denis Glennon are young but have been around for a good while and players can learn from them. People are saying that we have to build a new team, but we have to build a new team, in my opinion, by giving them the opportunity to growing with seasoned players. Q: Is your target to get promoted in 2011? PF: Absolutely. But our first game is away to Louth, who traditionally start the league very quickly. Then home to Cavan and away to Tipperary. They are certainly not easy games. While I would expect us to come out of Division Three, if we don't take the right approach, we could easily find ourselves at the bottom of that league, as there are a number of good teams there. Q: Are Westmeath supporters being a little unrealistic, expecting to dine at football's top table while the county is clearly in a transition period? PF: Yes I would advocate caution, but I think we don't think big enough in a smaller county, if I can call it that, like Westmeath. If you don't set out your stall to do and achieve, what happens is there a lack of belief. And if there is a lack of belief, people won't strive to push themselves that extra little bit that makes all the difference between winning and losing. If we just decide in Westmeath that we are just going to consolidate our place, suddenly you find yourself at the base. It has to be our aim to get out of Division Three and to be successful. I honestly believe that a number of the smaller counties fear the likes of Dublin and, because of that, they are already giving away ten per cent of an opportunity. Q: The championship draw has been reasonably kind for 2011, as draws go. Surely that will give lads an incentive to put in that bit extra? PF: Yes, it was quite a good draw and everyone in Westmeath will see that, but people in Offaly and Wexford will see it the very same way. They will see a route to the Leinster final and see a huge opportunity there. For now, we need to batten down the hatches and focus totally on the league and get ourselves into a situation where we win matches and bring the confidence levels back up. When we do the likes of that, we can look at the championship. It may be only six months away, but it's a lifetime away where Westmeath are at the moment, for the simple reason that we have lost 14 games in-a-row in the league. It's very difficult to build confidence in a team if you're doing that. We have to set our stall out to win as many games as possible in the league and then let our momentum carry us into the championship. I've seen these guys in Westmeath; they will train and they will put in the effort, provided they see the opportunity to succeed. Q: You are going to manage the U-21 team as well. How do you feel about that dual role, particularly with the U-21 championship starting so early in the year? PF: The fact that we are going through a transition period in Westmeath, it is vital for me to be involved with the U-21s. It is an opportunity for me to promote those guys and build the type of football we want to build. I think Westmeath should seriously look at developing a football strategy at minor, U-21 and senior level. They should all play the same type of football so that there's a natural progression from one to the other. It's going to be difficult enough to build a team that can compete at the highest level and, to do that, I think it's vital that I should work with the U-21s. I can understand how they work and they can understand how I work. That way, in a few years those guys will be walking on to a senior team and they are not going to a different game-plan, to different ideas. Q: Next year's U-21 team should be very competitive as many players are under-age again. Maybe Westmeath can even go all the way in Leinster? PF: The way I think, I would be expecting to win the Leinster U-21 championship, but I would have to express a bit of concern as the U-21 competition is a very strange one. You have got a lot of guys who played last year but you also a lot of lads who are committed to college work. Because maybe they are in their final year, they are finding it difficult to give the same commitment as before. This is a problem with that age group. Add to that the fact that we are playing Laois in Portlaoise in the first round. There's going to be nothing easy about that. Having said that, the guys themselves are really buoyed up after this year and there is an expectation that they can achieve. There is a certain sense of self-belief and when you have that, there is an awful lot you can work with. Q: Will you have the use of dual players such as Paul Greville? Can they be accommodated by both Kevin Martin and yourself? PF: In a perfect world, I suppose footballers would be footballers and hurlers would be hurlers. Paul, Brendan and Conor Jordan have all expressed a desire to play both. Obviously, we'll have to watch their work rate in training and look after them a little bit more. We can certainly do with all the players we can get and I suppose that applies to the hurling also. Yes, it's a small bit of a disadvantage that they will be hurling as well but, for me, the advantages far outweigh the disadvantages. Q: There was resentment in certain quarters prior to the championship this year when you recalled a number of lads who had not played in the league. Have you laid down the law for 2011 that this will not be the case and that players, who are not around for the grind in the winter and spring, will not be walking back onto the team come the summer? PF: I am delighted to have the opportunity to clarify that, as a lot of people have asked me is it going to the same thing next year. Basically, this year gone by when I was asked to come in, I had six weeks to get a team ready, having lost all our league matches. So I felt at the time that we needed experience to try and get us across the line. I went to guys who are all very, very good footballers and still are. It's very disappointing to hear comments about 'bringing back the old guys'. The likes of John Keane, Dessie Dolan and Derek Heavin, those guys are not old in relative terms. Injury has caused them problems but those guys were superb players for Westmeath. It wasn't just a matter of bringing back somebody for the sake of it, they were brought back to try and provide experience. I have been given a two-year term, so basically it's up to me to use that two-year term to provide a team for Westmeath that can compete at the highest level. If some guys have gone past it, we will make room for younger guys coming through. It is a transition period and a team has to be built. It's a completely different situation from the term I spent in charge earlier this summer. Q: So overall, are you optimistic for 2011? PF: Absolutely. There has been a lot of groundwork going on with the backroom staff. I think that people in Westmeath should have a sense of belief that these lads can achieve. I've already said to the players, I don't want competitors, I want people who can win. Maybe we think too low and too small in Westmeath. Let's push the boat out, give ourselves every opportunity to progress and show our players that there is an opportunity to succeed.