The stadium was empty, but The Downs made the most noise at TEG Cusack Park last Sunday where their senior footballers edged out defending champions Garrycastle to reach the semi-final for the second year running.
By Damien Maher
It was a victory fashioned out out the old traditional values of grit and determination and Manager John O’Mahoney was thrilled that The Downs stood up and were counted when the pressure came on.
“That’s what we have been preaching to them. At the end of the day, when that crunch time comes, and it comes in the second half of every game: after 27 minutes of the second half, Garrycastle drew level. You have a better chance of actually closing it out if you stay calm, and our lads did, and we got the point. That was the difference on the day,” he observed.
“That’s worth an awful lot of experience for our lads; they can see now that if everyone is panicking around the place and if everyone tries to win the game on their own, it doesn’t work. But we stuck together as a team, didn’t panic and I knew that if we got it up here we’d get one opportunity. Thankfully we put it away.”
GREAT CHARACTER
The Downs were written off prior to the game, but showed their resilience and manufactured a superb first half goal, finished by Conor Murray.
“It was a very sweet victory, to be honest, because, as I said, last week’s performance wouldn’t have been good enough. Today, our lads really knuckled down; I think they took a lot of confidence out of having won the match the last day after the downer of the first day against Rosemount,” O’Mahoney remarked.
“They reacted well and it was all about work rate, all about winning the dirty ball and that’s what our lads did. They applied themselves and then they got the goal and they got that bit of a cushion. We kind of maintained that for the most part. Really, they showed great character when Garrycastle got level and we had to come back into it again. It was a brilliant point by Ciaran Nolan to win it.”
The Downs now take on St Loman’s, Mullingar in what looks an intriguing contest on Sunday week, but O’Mahoney was keen to stress the need for improvement, just as he did prior to the Garrycastle game.
“The performance was good enough today, but I’m saying the same now about the semi-final against St Loman’s. That wouldn’t (be good enough). We’d need to up it again. We didn’t play to our best; we looked at the stats there. We need to win more kick-outs, for example, and there’s a whole lot more that there’s potential to improve on. We just have to keep working on that and see where it takes us,” he opined.
“We could have had another goal and maybe there were a few more chances we could have put away. There was a script about this game that was written and it was expected to be Garrycastle. The incentive I gave our lads was, ‘let’s write our own script’, and in fairness our boys wrote the script today. They fully deserved it because Garrycastle are great champions and they really put us under the cosh.
COLLECTIVE EFFORT
“You could see their experience in the last few minutes; they weren’t panicking or anything else. Thankfully, we didn’t panic either and we got the winning point.”
It was a huge collective effort, but O’Mahoney agreed that Luke Loughlin led the line superbly with five precious points and played a pivotal part in the winning score.
“Luke is a tremendous player and I’m delighted for him because he works hard on his game. He really wants to do well; he’s very accurate, very strong and he can play the game any way. He had a very good game today, but there was a whole lot of performances there, fellas who you mightn’t notice getting the work rate in.
“But some of the tackles we won – Darragh Egerton and Conor Coughlan, for example. We won ball against the head, probably and that was superb,” he remarked.
The Downs advance, but one of their key men, Niall Mitchell remains a big doubt for the semi-final having missed last Sunday’s game. He will go for further assessment in Santry Sports Surgery Clinic this week.
“There is a shoulder injury and he looks to be out for a semi-final, but we will just have to keep our fingers crossed and do everything we can to get him back on the field as soon as possible,” added O’Mahoney.
Westmeath Senior Football
Championship semi final line up
St Loman’s Mullingar v The Downs, Athlone v Tyrrellspass, both semi-finals to be played on Sunday, 13 September.
