By John Harrington

Jamie Gonoud is a quick and clever footballer on the field, and off it the Westmeath man displays the same traits.

He isn’t short of opinions, nor is he shy of expressing them. Nowadays county players often seem at pains to reveal as little of themselves as possible, but Gonoud is pure, unfiltered honesty.

Ask him a question and he’ll answer with some thought. Offer an opinion, and he won’t be afraid to argue the point with you if he disagrees.

And when the topic of conversation is football, it quickly becomes clear he’s a deep thinker on the game. He’s not the sort who just turns up on match-day, ties his boots, and plays on instinct. There’s a lot of method to his preparation, and every opponent has been carefully gauged before the contest.

“I’m definitely a bit more in-depth,” says Gonoud. “I like to do my own little bit of research and I’ll look at games that maybe teams were are playing have played before, look at the players closely and look at the simple stuff. What feet they kick with, what way they hand-pass the ball. It’s just important to have an idea on the day what can be thrown at you. It might just help that small little bit, but if it helps at all, all the better.”

Gonoud plays corner-back for Westmeath, but is much more than a pure stopper. A natural footballer who’s very comfortable on the ball, he likes to get on the front-foot and offer his team an attacking outlet whenever possible.

“Yeah, well, that’s in my game to go forward,” he says. “I would have played a lot of my football at wing-back as well. If there’s every a turnover or a block I’m on my bike to go.

“I was at Donegal and Monaghan and I saw the likes of Ryan Wylie and Karl Lacey and Paddy McGrath; they were showing excellently how to do it. They weren’t holding back. This stuff of a defender being a defender is gone now, you’re a footballer so they were showing exactly how to get forward. I think it was Ryan Wylie who actually won the penalty for Monaghan and it just shows how corner backs have a licence to go forward if they are brave enough.”

The idea of an inter-county player travelling to watch other county teams play at the weekend shouldn’t seem unusual, but it does. The game at the highest level is so demanding now you’d imagine they either wouldn’t have the time or the inclination to immerse themselves in it again on one of their few days off from it.

Every day is a learning day for Gonoud, though. He’s always looking for a new edge, and he regards watching some of the best players in the country up close as an entertaining form of homework.

“First and foremost I love football, I enjoy watching it and I enjoy watching it being played at the top level by the top players,” he says. “I’m still young, I’m still learning, and how better to learn than off lads who’ve won All-Stars and All-Ireland medals? It’s a no-brainer for me really.

“I like to see how your Colin Walshes, your Ryan Wylies, and Karl Laceys are playing. It is interesting to see how they play in the full-back line and how they go about attacking the play when there’s a turnover defensively. It’s interesting to see what’s going on outside your own camp just for your own ideas.

“That was the first time I got the opportunity in the last few years to go to see an Ulster championship game. I was absolutely astounded by the atmosphere, the intensity, and just the whole occasion itself was absolutely amazing. I really enjoyed it and it’s something I’d like to do again, because I can learn from it.

“I would have always went to games, it’s something I always do. The family go and watch the games and moreso now than ever that I’m playing inter-county football I can go and watch the games and pay a bit more attention to different aspects of it than when I was younger. Before I would have been looking at my favourite players going ‘oh look at the point he kicked’.

“Now I’m looking at some of the defensive positions players are getting in and how they are going about going forward; are they attacking through the wings or through the centre. It’s just very interesting to see and take note for your own individual performance.”

Gonoud is 23 and it’s surprising that it has taken him until this year to nail down a place in the Westmeath championship team because his ability and leadership qualities have been apparent for some time.

It’s a testament to both that he captained a Maynooth Sigerson Cup team that included inter-county players like Michael Darragh MacAuley, Paddy McBrearty, Paul Cribbin, Eamon Wallace and Eric Lowndes. Ironically, Gonoud believes it was the effort he put into playing Sigerson Cup Football that held him back at inter-county level for a few years.

“Yeah, I suppose I've been around the panel for three years now and I just find this year more than any other year that I've finished playing Sigerson football and I'm actually coming into the summer fresh in the body. I know it might sound a bit silly, but I just always thought coming into May, June, July I was extremely tired because I would have been playing since November, December, January, February, all those months.

“Look, there is a high demand on the players at the moment. Especially if you're U-21 as well, you're going to be playing U-21, Sigerson, and then in to League football. I just found on some occasions where you have to play Sigerson on a Wednesday and then go out to play League on a Sunday.

“Then maybe if you win your Sigerson in the first round or quarter-final you play the following week and then another League game. It's absolutely crazy. It's not fair on lads. I think it's something that has to be looked at in the future, but unfortunately there's an awful lot going on in the GAA and I don't know what's going to come out of it.”

It might be a little later than most expected, but Gonoud is certainly making his mark as an inter-county player this year and has been one of Westmeath’s better performers en-route to Sunday’s Leinster Final against Dublin.

Westmeath’s chances have been written off by all and sundry, but if all of their players are as naturally confident as Gonoud then they’ll certainly go into the game with the right mentality. He knows they’re underdogs for a reason, but he’s adamant they have a chance and says they’ll bring the fight to Dublin this year rather than just defend for their lives as they did in last year’s Leinster Final.

“Last year we had two weeks after the Leinster final to get it right. This year we’ve had three weeks to get it right. Last year for the group as a whole it was our first Leinster final and maybe the occasion was a bit more than the game itself.

“We were happy to be there after beating Meath, happy to be in the parade, happy to see the dressing rooms and happy to go out in front of 40-50,000 people. This year we have been there and done that. We want to put in a performance to try and beat probably the best team of this generation. We are under absolutely no illusion that for us to win this game we need Dublin to have a very off day and we need to have the game of our lives.

“Every team has their day and ever top team could have a bad day. You just have to be prepared for that. What we did last year was tried and tested and failed by inviting them on. That’s not going to happen this year. We are going to go at the game and try and win it. That’s just what we have to do.”

This Dublin team likes to set the agenda by attacking from all areas of the pitch and getting the opposition running back towards their own goal. That was vividly illustrated in last year’s All-Ireland Final when Kerry’s Colm Cooper spent most of the game back-pedaling into his own half to track Dublin corner-back Philly McMahon rather than taking him on at the other end of the pitch.

Gonoud hopes to give Dublin a taste of their own medicine on Sunday. He knows he’ll have to keep close tabs defensively on whichever Dublin corner-forward he’s marking, but he also intends to turn the tables as much as possible by getting on the front-foot himself.

“Oh yeah, whoever I’m marking is only human as well,” says Gonoud. “I don’t really care. Once I am going the other way I can hopefully cause as much harm as hopefully them coming the other way. It is important to put them on the back foot as well.

“We have heard so much about the Dublin footballers going forward because all we have seen of them is going forward because teams sit back. We have to go at them and see what they are like defensively."

If Gonoud’s attitude is reflective of the Westmeath team as a whole, it’s clear they intend to have a real cut off Dublin and at the very least go down swinging.

You would have thought the loss of Rory O’Carroll and Jack McCaffrey would weaken Dublin defensively this year, but so far they’ve been as solid as ever. If there are any fault-lines in that new-look defence, Gonoud hopes that Westmeath can exert enough pressure to expose them.

“Everyone is talking at the moment that they have a weak full-back line," he says. "We’re under no illusion, we know that Johnny Cooper, Philly McMahon and Davy Byrne have All-Irelands and All Stars. They are an absolutely unbelievable full-back line.

“Where can we hurt them is a great question. We have to try and find that out. Maybe we can hurt them with that high ball or just going at them on the front foot.

“Cian O’Sullivan is a big factor in how they play. He is the key man in my opinion. He makes that team tick. He sits back, he gets forward, he links it together. It is important to keep him occupied and then just put in the high ball and see what happens.”

A victory for a soon to be Division Four Westmeath team against the reigning All-Ireland Champions and four-in-a-row Division One League Champions Dublin would be the biggest shock Gaelic Football has seen for a very long-time.

Still, it has been the year of the underdog so far. Longford downed Monaghan last weekend, Tipperary beat Cork in Munster, and Galway scalped a Mayo team going for six provincial titles in a row in Connacht. All of those results are a source of inspiration for Gonoud.

“Of course,” he says. “Dublin have played Mayo and have had very close games and we have played Galway and they have been close games. It just shows that the standard in class isn’t as much as people make it out to be.

“It was definitely a big boost seeing something like that happen. Even Tipperary beating Cork. I know they didn’t have their best Munster final but it just shows that teams in Division Three and Division Four can out it up to Division One teams.”

Believing you can do something is half the battle. And Jamie Gonoud is most definitely a believer.