Ian O'Riordanfinds the Westmeath manager with feet solidly grounded and the Longford manager feeling in need of a pick-me-up

GIVEN IT was their first win in the Leinster football championship since they won the title outright back in 2004, there was something surprisingly muted about Westmeath's reaction to yesterday's first-round win over their neighbours Longford.

Maybe it was because their championship ambitions this year go way beyond the first round. Or maybe they just realised it was a game they could just as easily have lost despite their obvious superiority. Either way, manager Tomás Ó Flatharta had both feet firmly on the ground, and, fittingly, also kept his back to the wall of the dressing-room tunnel at Pearse Park.

"I thought the pace of the game dropped immensely," he said, "and maybe because the day was so humid. But it didn't suit us when the pace dropped. We gave ball away, but still our back line did a lot of good defending and good-quality tackling. And that helped keep the Longford score down.

"But it goes back to the old saying: the game is never over. We played some good ball into our forwards in the first half, then stopped doing that. We missed a good number of scores as well."

Ó Flatharta took over as manager from Páidí Ó Sé the year after Westmeath's 2004 Leinster-winning season, so this was his first win in the province.

Clearly his ambitions for the weeks ahead go beyond that: "Well, it's not about breaking losing sequences or anything else; it's about performance. Our performance today wasn't as good as the league, but the good thing is the amount of things we know we have to improve on . . . and prepare for the Offaly game, because they're going to be waiting in the long grass for us down in Tullamore in four weeks' time. It might have worked out well for us, in one way."

Defender Damien Healy struck at least one note of satisfaction: "It was quite hot and humid, and hard on the over-30s, out there, myself and (Martin) Flanagan. We knew they'd put it up to us in the second half. Longford have never lain down.

"When they got that goal . . . that made it a little more exciting, but we knew if we kept plugging away we'd hold on. The panic was there, though, a small bit.

"But it's a nice match to win. A lot of guys in this team have never won a match in Leinster. I think the younger lads have stepped up this year. Their apprenticeship is over, and they're the ones driving the team."

Luke Dempsey is one of those managers that when asked for a reaction breaks into a monologue touching all aspects of the game.

"Disappointed, especially that the game never really got going," he began. "It was like our players were stymied. Westmeath's tactic of bringing a man back, allied to their attacking flair, from defence, caused us an awful lot of bother. As did Martin Flanagan's performance at midfield. I thought he was outstanding.

"The second half was an awful lot of stop-start and poor football. And it really took Paul Barden to ignite what is in us, but it never really came out. We just never played with our freestyle football but were probably never let play.

"Westmeath have gone quite Ulster-like in their style of play. Defensively packing, and getting the very quick ball up to very agile forwards. But if physicality is going to be rewarded, by not giving frees when they are frees, as I saw them, then they seemed to be getting easier frees."

The Longford manager had other complaints, like Denis Glennon's goal: "I thought it was controversial. He seemed to run an awful long way along the sideline, and it was a soft goal to concede. Two points became five.

"But I'm proud of my players. We have a small pick. They stuck with it, came back at the end. Our difficulty now is that it's July 19th, which is 10 weeks. It's going to be very, very hard to pick this group up again before the qualifiers, to face a team that will have come out a lot later than us."