'We could have made slightly better decisions' admits McCabe
By Gerry Buckley
Understandably, it was a “very disappointed” Dermot McCabe who faced the media in Aughrim last Sunday afternoon after his Westmeath senior football team had wrapped up a frustrating 2025 season with arguably the most painful defeat of all, a very preventable one-point loss to Wicklow in the Tailteann Cup quarter-final.
Expanding on his charges’ galling loss, the Cavan man opined: “We did a lot of things right, I suppose, and I felt that on two or three occasions we had got into winning positions. There were probably bad calls on our behalf, and maybe on the referee’s behalf, which meant that momentum shifted against us, and when you’re in Aughrim – or any venue – it’s very hard when that happens. But we’ve to look at ourselves, and there were one or two occasions when we could have made slightly better decisions.”
In relation to a particularly important decision by stand-in ref Seamus Mulhaire, the losing bainisteoir concurred with most spectators when he added: “Sam (McCartan) was running through near the end with an opportunity and there was a tug on his arm that wasn’t penalised. They’re uncontrollables, but we probably didn’t manage a few things we could have controlled. We didn’t manage them well.”
An eight-point lead after 43 minutes when aided by a slight wind certainly looked like a winning position for the visitors to Echelon Park. McCabe agreed, stating: “Momentum went against us. Later when we were four points up, there were some handling errors and kicking balls away when you’re a man down (after Joe Moran’s black card). We got caught with just two back as well which ended up as a two-pointer (from a free). All those little things add up and it ends up with the result we have today.”
The list of narrow defeats over five months is very long. The manager was asked if this was the biggest blow of all, and he responded: “Definitely, it is. I don’t want to be making excuses, but we had new players coming in and it’s hard for them making their debuts in National League and championship games. We’ve a better understanding of players we have, and there are others we can look at. But it’s difficult to do that in these type of games. I’m disappointed for the lads and the circumstances in which this happened today. We have done lots of good things throughout the year, and lots of good things today, but one or two things just went against us.
“Maybe all these games in a row caught up with us. If we go back to the Limerick game, we just weren’t on it that day and that probably came back to bite us a bit when we had to go so many weekends in a row. That’s tough to keep going. We lost Matthew Whittaker to a hamstring injury. He is a huge threat and an outlet for us. Ray (Connellan) has had to come back very quickly from an injury. We had two ACLs with Conor Dillon and Enda (Gaffney).”
In conclusion, he stated: “We have a great group of lads who are very passionate about Westmeath. None of us know what to say just now as we would have at least liked to have got to extra-time.”