‘Campaign will give U20 side plenty of experience’ - McKinley
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Finn Duffy, Adam Keane snd Shane Ormsby with the Liam Connor Cup, following Westmeath’s victory in the All-Ireland U20 ‘B’ football final. JOHN_MC_CAULEYImage 2 of 7
Westmeath’s Conor Callaghan skips away from the Monaghan cover. JOHN_MC_CAULEYImage 3 of 7
Westmeath’s Ryan Kelly is held up by Monaghan’s Matthew Conlon. JOHN_MC_CAULEYImage 4 of 7
Seán Callan, Monaghan, puts pressure on Westmeath’s Ronan Murray. JOHN_MC_CAULEYImage 5 of 7
Westmeath’s Oisín Shortall is tackled by Packi Doogan, Monaghan. JOHN_MC_CAULEYImage 6 of 7
Westmeath’s Shane Ormsby competes for this high ball against Monaghan’s Tom Doherty. JOHN_MC_CAULEYImage 7 of 7
Westmeath’s Shane Corcoran gets his shot away as Monaghan’s Matthew Conlon moves in to challenge. JOHN_MC_CAULEYUnderstandably, it took the always-obliging Kenny McKinley some time to fulfil his post-match media duties, such were the ecstatic scenes in Kingspan Breffni Park late last Wednesday night after his U20 footballers had won rare silverware for Westmeath after a fabulously entertaining contest against Monaghan.
When things settled down somewhat, the St Loman’s, Mullingar man struggled to make sense of the drama which had preceded. In fact, this scribe’s initial question, ‘Try and sum that up, Kenny’, was greeted by guffaws from the interviewers and interviewee alike!
“I really don’t know! Listen, we got off to a bad start. We could have been eight or nine points down after ten minutes. We got lucky. They had a chance to score their second goal and he (Packie Doogan Burke) kind of scuffed it wide of the post. I think that gave us a bit of a lifeline and we just slowly dragged ourselves back into the game. They dominated the first 10/15 minutes and we just couldn’t get our hands on the football. The longer the game went on, we were reducing the number of mistakes we were making. But we still made an awful lot of them and were guilty of carrying the ball into tackles, and they were very good at turning us over,” he added.
Expanding on the yo-yo nature of the scoring, the 1995 All-Ireland minor winner opined: “That game could have gone either way. They had plenty of opportunities to win that game and didn’t take them. We had plenty of opportunities ourselves, especially at the end of the regulation 60 minutes, and we didn’t take them. They got an equaliser with the last kick in extra-time from a cheap turnover.”
McKinley confirmed that penalties had been practiced, stating: “We had a bit of luck in the penalty shootout. We threw on Ronan Murray in the last minute of extra-time because we knew he was going to be one of our penalty-takers. We knew the five guys who needed to be on the pitch when the final whistle went. If you call a spade a spade, the shootout is a cruel way to decide a game, and it’s up the gods.
“As I said to the lads in the circle before it, ‘Who am I to advise ye about penalties, sure I never scored one in my life! The only small bit of advice I have is to try to make the keeper save it. Try and stay away from the middle, and once you start your walk-up, make up your mind and don’t change it. We trained one night in Multy and had a shootout practice, and they were the five guys who seemed to put them away the most consistently. The lads took their scores and they got there.”
Reflecting on both the ‘A’ and ‘B’ campaigns, the winning bainisteoir concluded on a number of positive notes: “It’s a great way to end the journey. In the grand scheme of things, I don’t know will it change everything, but we’ve finished the campaign and those lads got huge experience. That’s eight games of football with that team. It’s a bit of silverware at the end of the day. Dermot (McCabe) will have a few lads back into the senior team, and he and I worked well together this year. He gave me great access to the lads, and the seniors are going well in the Tailteann Cup.”