‘We were well beaten on the night’ – Mark McHugh

Westmeath football manager Mark McHugh admitted that last Saturday night's chastening defeat to Laois "takes us back down a peg or two". But he still believes that his side can bounce back in Sunday week's crunch clash against Limerick.

“It's funny the way the game went. I felt we actually competed very well in the first half. There was a decent breeze out there, we were against it, and we were just down by the goal at half-time, we were actually content enough,” said McHugh.

“At the start of the second half, I think we dropped two shots short straight away. I don't want to say that sucked the life out of us or gave them ammunition or something, but the whole tide changed then. Laois came out really hungry and they started breaking us down and playing the better football. Simple as that, they were the better team by a country mile in that second half.”

McHugh always felt Laois would provide a stiff test on their home ground. The former Donegal star felt his side “regrouped well” from the first Laois goal and was happy to be within “touching distance” at half-time. Understandably, however, he was very disappointed with the way the second half unfolded.

“They beat Sligo and we were watching their last game during the week and they probably should have beaten Clare. But we have to dust ourselves down and we have the week off now, so we need to let the bodies recover and we'll have a huge game against Limerick.

“We didn't do the right things in the second half as a team. You can also say it was one of those nights that nothing went right,” said McHugh, pointing to “missing frees in front of goals” and other mistakes.

“Laois were far superior in that second half, and fair play to them. They came with a game plan and they snuffed us out, and we have to look at it and try to get better.

“It's an away game in the league and, ultimately, I don't think there's any easy away games in any of the divisions. But we're definitely disappointed in the manner of the defeat because we were well beaten on the night; there's no point in making qualms about it.

“We have to just try to keep getting better. We're three or four months into a journey with this group, and we have a lot of work done, but there's a lot of work to do and we can see that. Hopefully, this will make us work harder.”

McHugh said he didn't see the incident which led to Ray Connellan's red card late on and it remains to be seen if any appeal will be lodged.

Speaking about the injury problems, McHugh said “the two lads that came off tonight, Matty (Whittaker) and Wally (Ronan Wallace), we just need to assess them to see where they're at”.

Tadhg Baker “should be alright in the coming weeks”, said McHugh, but added that his brother Senan “had a bit of bad news this week in terms of his injury”.

“It is probably as bad as we feared. You know, he has a lot of damage done to the shoulder, so he needs to get specialists to have a look at it, and then it might require surgery, so he will probably be on the sideline for a while.”

In seeking positives from the wreckage of the nine-point defeat, the main one is that Westmeath can still secure promotion with two wins, with their fate still in their own hands.

“Yeah, I said that to the lads in there (the dressing room). We have a huge game against Limerick. We have to win that. If we win that, then we'll go down to Wexford on the last day. So it's in our hands. We've had good results earlier on but if we play like we played in the second half tonight, we'll not get anywhere,” said McHugh.

“There are positives for me in that first half, definitely, the way we played against the breeze. I'm not sure then did we think that the breeze was going to win us the game. If it (the wind) died or it didn't, I'm not sure, but we didn't play well enough anyway. They played all the football in the second half, and the lads know that we just need to regroup and go back at it.”

As for the battle for primary possession from kickouts, McHugh said Laois have “an unbelievable keeper” in Killian Roche, who is adept at picking out teammates. But the Westmeath boss also admitted his side struggled to win breaking ball, adding that Laois “wanted it a wee bit more”.

“In that second half, I need to look back and see what happened, but the game got away from us pretty quickly, so we just need to rectify that,” McHugh remarked.

It emerged in advance of the game that Westmeath held a training session in Leitrim, with the wet weather of recent weeks and the return of club fixtures leaving no grass pitch available in the county. As expected, however, the Kilcar man was not using this as an excuse.

“We struggled to get a pitch one of the days, and I just called in a favour to a club up where I presented medals, but that's not an excuse. To be fair, the boys will go anywhere to train, and we felt that we just needed to be on a grass field and, we went there (to Leitrim), but that's not the reason we lost the game tonight. The reason we lost the game is because we went away from doing the right things and then when they got a goal or two, we were chasing it. We put serious pressure on our full back line tonight, and I don't like to do that. I usually like to be in control, and it was just one of those nights. Laois were by far the better team and hats off to them,” McHugh added.