McGuinness Cup win ‘will help us an awful lot’ – Gavin
After managing the Westmeath U20 football team on St Patrick’s Day in Bekan to win the second staging of the Philly McGuinness Cup – Tyrone won the inaugural competition in 2019 – winning bainisteoir Damien Gavin was philosophical as he looked forward to the upcoming Leinster championship.
The Lake County ran out 4-11 to 2-14 winners, with goals from Senan Baker, Devin Hill, Matthew Whittaker and Peter Pierson getting them over the line at Connacht GAA’s spectacular Centre of Excellence.
At the outset, the St Mary’s, Rochfortbridge man stated: “It’s good to keep winning competitive games and that was a very competitive game today. We were very lucky to be six points up at half-time, to be honest.
“Our first goal came after a poor ball in, but Senan (Baker) turned it into a good ball and got a goal out of it. The second came from an early ball in but the lads inside, to be fair to them, were very dangerous all day. Every time we got the ball in, they won it. We had very few wides, and from that point of view we are happy.
“We did very well at the start of the second half, but when we went so far ahead things probably started to go against us. Sligo took over a bit around midfield and won breaking ball, and we were under a lot of pressure. When we got the ball we tried to move it back instead of moving it forward and keep it up in their half.
“It was backs to the wall stuff until we got the fourth goal, but we kept fighting which is a good sign, especially coming into the championship. That’s what you want. If we had gone on to win by 15/16 points, it wouldn’t have been worth a damn to us. That battle will do the lads the world of good,” he added.
The all-important Leinster championship starts three weeks from last Thursday (April 7). In this regard, the All-Ireland minor winning skipper from 1995 reflected: “We have Mayo and Longford in challenges ahead of it, and that’s all. We are trying to get lads back from injury as well.
“We lost Adam Treanor and Sean Leech in the warm-up today with hamstring problems. They are two big players for us, but thankfully young lads do recover quickly. It’s giving other lads opportunities and some of them stood up today. Wicklow have put a lot of work into underage in recent years and that’s not going to be easy at all.
“The venue is not fixed yet but we are under no illusions how difficult it will be, regardless. The U20 is the last knockout competition and in the last couple of years we’ve had bad luck in some games.
“It’s a great championship to be fair, and if you look at the results in it over the past five years there’s only a couple of scores between any two teams. It usually comes down to a little bit of luck and that battling spirit. I think today will help us an awful lot,” he concluded.
- Gerry Buckley