Ger Egan
By John Harrington
Westmeath manager Tom Cribbin admitted his team was completely outclassed by Dublin in this afternoon’s Leinster SFC Semi-Final.
They tried to take Dublin on at their own expansive game, but were absolutely torn apart by the attacking quality of the reigning back to back All-Ireland Champions.
“We were completely outclassed,” said Cribbin after the match. “My gut feeling and heart before it was that the only hope you would have of beating Dublin is to lock down the shown completely and try not to let the goals in.
“But people didn't want to see that, our players didn't want to see that. They felt they could have a go at them, but we were just outclassed.”
Westmeath’s biggest problem on the day was their almost complete inability to win possession off their own kick-outs.
Dublin’s high-press forced Westmeath goalkeeper Darren Quinn to kick the ball long, but whenever he did so Dublin’s greater physical presence in the middle third of the field saw them hoover up kick-out after Westmeath kick-out.
“Yeah, we're small in the middle,” said Cribbin. “To have the pace to play them, we'd worked so hard on it, but we have been struggling of late there in that area.
“It's very difficult for the keeper, teams are learning how to play a zonal shape now in defence instead of man-marking and pushing lads up into squares like basketball and pushing extra bodies up.
“Teams of the calibre of Dublin are not afraid to push 12 lads up into that zone and it makes it very, very difficult unless you have an out-man. We just couldn't win it, we couldn't get our hands on it.”
“We just weren't picking up the breaking balls either. We talked so much about how much we needed to win the breaking ball, but we just couldn't win it.”
It was Dublin’s biggest winning margin of the Jim Gavin era, and the Sky Blues manager was unsurprisingly pleased by the calibre of their performance.
“You'd have to be satisfied with the scores that we got and defensively how well we played,” said Gavin after the match.
“We had an excellent, challenging game against Carlow and we were just building up from that.
“Probably tough on Westmeath as well, they've come through three games in three weeks, back to back. I'm sure fatigue played a part and they've lost some exceptional players as well. Any team when that happens it can hurt you.
“We just focused on getting our game-plan right for today and we just traded off that preparation and we got that performance.”
