When Frankie Wright was setting up the Lilliput Adventure Centre in the park a few years back, he had the quarry cleaned out and its base layered with a couple of hundred tonnes of sand. He put in man-made dunes and tracks and turned a wasteland into the perfect training circuit. For two nights every week since December 1, Lilliput has been home to the Westmeath hurlers.
Surrounded by dense forest and with a cutting breeze sweeping in from the shores of Lough Ennell just metres away, 26 players move to the rhythm of Wright’s beat. They begin with a series of runs up a 45-degree incline before returning to the centre grid for stretching, core work and SAQ training. There are plenty of other stamina runs built into the circuit but this is no torture chamber in the dark winter for some of the senior players; this is the training environment that they’ve always wanted.
“There have been a lot of low points over the years but the lowest times were always when lads wouldn’t bother to turn up for training,” says Andrew Mitchell. “It was just ridiculous at times, but attitudes have changed. We don’t want to settle for second best anymore.”
For the first time in their history, Westmeath will finally rub shoulders with the big boys in the hurling world. Their success in last year’s Christy Ring Cup final secured their access into the Liam McCarthy championship and has guaranteed them a bounty in the process.
If they manage to defeat Dublin in the Leinster quarter-final, they will have a home draw against Kilkenny in the semi- final. In the All-Ireland qualifiers, they’re guaranteed two home games against top Munster outfits. Westmeath hurling has a chance at last to create an identity.
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“When I’m walking around Mullingar now, the first thing people ask me is, ‘How is the hurling going?’” says John Shaw. “That would never have been the case this time last year. Not at all. The players are starting to get recognised now but we’re starting to get a bit of respect, which is more important.”
IT’S 20 years since Westmeath had any shred of respect in the hurling world. For a time in the mid-1980s, they went toe-to-toe with some of the big names and held their ground. They beat Tipperary in Division Two in 1985 and defeated them in Division One a year later. They turned over Galway in Ballinasloe and rattled Kilkenny in a League quarter-final. David Kilcoyne won the county’s first and only hurling All-Star that December and they looked to be going places.
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The dream died a silent death soon afterwards because the team fragmented. Work was scarce in the county at the time, and within a couple of years 12 of the team that won promotion were in New York. Those players won three New York championships but that was as close to the top as they got.
After Kilkenny annihilated them in the 1989 Leinster championship by 27 points, they retreated to the All-Ireland B championship for four seasons, winning a title in 1991. They re-entered the Leinster championship in 1994 and made a decent push in that year’s League. They ran Kilkenny to five points before Clare stumbled over them in Ennis by two points in a game Clare had to win to qualify for a League quarter-final.
The trend in Westmeath, though, was always consistent with the mindset that has consistently blighted tier-two hurling counties. Competitive in the winter and spring, intense local rivalries shift priorities in the summer and players become unwilling to put their internal reputations on the line for the county team. On the Thursday before they played Wexford in the 1995 Leinster championship, 14 players showed up for training. Wexford destroyed them by 31 points but what did they expect? They haven’t played a big gun in the championship since.
Westmeath never had a shortage of high-profile coaches. Johnny Clifford arrived from Cork in 1992 and Kilkenny’s Georgie Leahy spent two seasons with them in the mid-1990s. Pat Delaney from Offaly took charge in 1998, while Waterford’s Shane Aherne came on board for six months in 2000.
Often, though, lack of ambition percolated down from apathy and disregard at the top. Delaney took them to a Division Two League final in 1998, which they lost to Kerry after a replay. When the new hurling divisions were redrafted for the 1999 National League to consist of 14 teams, the Westmeath county board pulled the plug on the idea and decided to remain in Division Two. Down replaced Westmeath in Division One and it was just one of the reasons Delaney didn ’t return. They’ve been fighting to get back into Division One ever since.
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“We were making serious progress under Pat Delaney but the county board wanted to get rid of him because he was doing his own thing,” says Barry Kennedy. “At times you got the feeling that the board didn’t want you to achieve. I thought it was the same when Johnny Clifford was there. If they let him do what he wanted, he might have got us a bit further. But there’s a lot of politics here and if you go against the grain, they don’t like it.”
This year is Kennedy’s 15th consecutive season with Westmeath. He joined the squad when he was 17 and, although he was part of the Westmeath squad that reached the Leinster minor football final a year later, he packed in football to concentrate on hurling. While hurling was still big, football was getting bigger. It still wasn’t a difficult decision.
“People would be going on to me about football but I only laugh at them,” says Kennedy. “Anyone can hand-pass a ball from A to B but it takes serious skill to play hurling. Hurling was always my number one but I always felt there were hurlers in Westmeath as good as in any county in Ireland. It’s just attitude. It’s all in the head.”
There was always a hard core in the county who believed in the dream; the trouble was getting everybody else to buy into it. Some clubs openly advised their players not to join the county team, while other players only used the county set-up as pre-season fitness training for their clubs.
That negativity constantly crippled any potential development. They reached another Division Two league final in 2001 and ran Dublin to three points in the 2002 Leinster championship, when Darren McCormack hit the post with the last puck of the game. But a year later Michael Conneely had to ring around looking for players before the Leinster championship and Dublin wiped them by 16 points.
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In 2004, Tom Ryan arrived from Limerick and committed to three years in charge. They heavily lost the Division Two League final to Down but Ryan got a great response in training all season. It was too good to last. Last year they lost out on a place in the League final by one point on scoring differences but two weeks before the beginning of the Christy Ring Cup, Ryan walked away because of dwindling numbers at training.
Although the players had to shoulder most of the responsibility, Ryan’s downfall was that he tried to tackle too many deep-rooted problems. Aside from the club-county issue, many of the hurlers are committed to strong football clubs in a competitive market and the exclusive dedication Ryan was looking for was unreasonable to expect.
Ryan wanted his whole selection committee to resign en bloc with him but Seamus Qualter saw no merit in doing that two weeks before the Christy Ring Cup and he took over the team. Qualter, a son of PJ, who played in the 1975 All-Ireland final for Galway, had been living in the county for 13 years and had played for Westmeath between 1994 and 1998.
“When I took over last June, there were lads laughing at me regarding winning the Christy Ring Cup,” says Qualter. “We were at rock bottom at the time. If we didn’t do well, I could have said that I didn’t have enough time. But it was all about getting the players hurling and getting them to enjoy it.”
The final against Down was played before the All-Ireland semi-final between Cork and Clare. Westmeath won in a high-scoring shoot-out.
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“Winning the final has done wonders for our confidence, especially when you looked at the performances of some of our players,” says Qualter. “We had been used to playing in front of about 200 people but lads were able to step up in Croke Park and produce it on a big day.”
They had other motivations, too. Through his involvement over the years as fixtures secretary, board secretary and as a referee, Adrian Murray was seen as Mr GAA in Westmeath. Soon after he joined the hurling squad as a co-ordinator last season, he was diagnosed with cancer. He stuck with the team and before Sean Kelly presented John Shaw with the Christy Ring Cup, he introduced Murray to the crowd, tears streaming down his cheeks. Murray passed away in October.
“He was inspirational because of the battle he was fighting at the time and his influence on the players was huge,” says Qualter. “The Christy Ring Cup was won for Adrian.”
A couple of weeks after the final, Murray wrote a letter to Qualter, describing what the win meant to him. Qualter misses him around the place but Murray’s legacy still lives on. His son Enda is now on the squad.
THEY can’t look on it as a burden but the future of Westmeath hurling is in the hands of this squad. If they can consolidate their position as a top 12 hurling county in the next few years, they will leave a mark and foster an environment that their predecessors were unable to forge 20 years ago.
“We just have to make this chance count,” says Darren McCormack. “We can’t look back with any regrets because we have a massive opportunity for Westmeath hurling. We’ve a lot of work to do but we’re in the top 12 and we deserve to be respected.”
Respect will be hard earned in the cut-throat championship arena but this is the youngest squad Westmeath have ever had and there are plenty of good young players coming on stream. Killian Cosgrove was outstanding last year, even though he was still a minor.
Still, they know they can’t take anything for granted. Despite what they achieved last year, Brendan Murtagh and Ronan Whelan have joined the football panel and aren’t with the hurlers at the moment. Football is king in this county and the hurlers know where they stand. They were supposed to get a civic reception last summer like the footballers did after winning the 2004 Leinster championship for the first time, but it never materialised.
“Whatever bit you get, you have to fight for it,” says Qualter. “It doesn’t drop into your lap and it just goes to show that you get forgotten about pretty quickly. We didn’t make a big deal about it but I just want the Westmeath players to feel important. That’s why I encouraged them all to join the GPA. Some of the county board fellas don’t like me for it but I don’t give a s***. If it’s good enough for DJ ( Carey), it’s good enough for our lads.” At the end of the session on Thursday night, the players gathered in the Lilliput centre for food and a team meeting. Barry Kennedy had already asked Qualter about Ollie Baker coming on board as a selector and Qualter addressed the issue. Baker is living in Athlone but has just been promoted in his job with the Gardaí and is due to be relocated in the coming week. It’s unlikely that Baker will be able to commit to Westmeath.
“Tell him there’s a job going in Pollard (Castlepollard),” quipped one voice from the back. “Ah,” came the immediate response, “he wants a quieter life than out there.”
They get back to reality today when they square up to Down in the Walsh Cup. There could be an edge to the match after the controversy surrounding last year’s Christy Ring final when the referee blew up two minutes early before the interval. If there is, Westmeath will take it in their stride and just keep moving forward.
“Come with all guns blazing on Sunday because Down will be gunning for us,” Qualter told his players before they left Lilliput. “We can only tog out 30 players but we want the 36 players to travel. Nobody be disappointed because we all have to put our shoulders to the wheel now. We’re looking at the bigger picture.”
A Westmeath hurling manager would never have been able to deliver a speech like that in January in the past and this is a crucial stage in their history. For Westmeath and for hurling’s sake, let’s hope they grasp it with both hands.