Four big weeks ahead for Westmeath hurlers

Westmeath senior hurling manager Joe Fortune said it's now time to focus fully on the upcoming championship and in getting the best out of his players for the Joe McDonagh campaign which start with a home game against Kerry on April 21.

Speaking after his side's loss to Dublin on Saturday, Fortune said he was hoping for a better performance from his side, but overall he's satisfied with the league campaign.

"There are people who will talk about today about (us) not being good enough. But we reset now; I'm happy with the National League on a whole and that we got a lot of game time into players. We don’t have any massively significant injuries going into the next four weeks. But I also realised, I tempered that with the fact that last week we beat Antrim. I wasn’t happy enough because our performance wasn’t good enough. I'm certainly not happy about that performance today either."

Westmeath begin the Joe McDonagh Cup campaign in four weeks and will play some challenge games before then. "We will get a couple of games in. We will keep it as in-house as we can. Like I said, the bodies are tired at the moment. The congested element of this season: like I said to you all the time in Division One, there is no room for a poor performance. You can have a poor performance in Division two or three and maybe get away with it. Even last week, we really didn’t perform that well and could have won by nine or 10 points. We have a couple of games coming up, but it will keep mostly in-house," he said.

"We need the people of Westmeath behind us. We realise today wasn’t good enough and we need to get supporters behind us, give us a chance in four weeks time against - fill Cusack Park. Get behind the lads that put the work that they're doing. We know today wasn't good enough. We realised the first day against Galway wasn’t good enough, but I realise that and the players realise that. We've got four weeks now to get ready to win a Joe McDonagh."