By Paul O’Donovan
Westmeath football captain Kieran Martin rued his side’s missed chances to claim victory against Down in Newry last Saturday. After the game Martin told Topic, “We had the chances to win it and to pull away with five or ten minutes to go and it could have been a different scenario at the end. In fairness, Down knew what to do and they just pulled it off there in the last minute. We missed our chances and that was basically it. The penalty miss, well it wasn’t the first penalty missed and won’t be the last, – these things happen. We just found it hard to get going and then when we did, they came back into it every time. We certainly weren’t expecting to go through the league with everything nice and easy for us. It is what we do now and how we react that will show what kind of a team we are. We can fall back, or we can learn from this and push on during the next few weeks. We still have a chance of going up and that is what we have to focus on. We will take a few days off, rest, freshen things up and it is needed because it has been a long slog. That was our eighth game this year and the legs were probably beginning to go near the end. We are disappointed but the break could do us good. We played well in patches and not many teams will come up to Newry here and come away with two points”.
The Maryland man has described the return of Francis Boyle (who played last Saturday) and the future return of players such as Kevin Maguire and John Heslin as a “huge boost”. “Everyone is pushing for places now and it is becoming a stronger panel now. We made too many mistakes tonight and we must improve for the Laois game,” said a positive Martin.
