{"id":475427,"date":"2026-05-31T00:35:08","date_gmt":"2026-05-31T00:35:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/475427\/"},"modified":"2026-05-31T00:35:08","modified_gmt":"2026-05-31T00:35:08","slug":"relief-for-mchugh-as-winning-westmeath-dig-deep-again","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/475427\/","title":{"rendered":"Relief for McHugh as winning Westmeath dig deep again"},"content":{"rendered":"

These are heady days for Westmeath football.<\/p>\n

Given there was a safety net for both themselves and Cavan in their Round 1 All-Ireland Football championship clash, there was always a danger that the Lake County could struggle following the high of landing just a second ever Leinster title two weeks ago at Croke Park.<\/p>\n

At times it looked like their winning run was about to come to an end, but for the third successive game, Mark McHugh’s side came out on top after extra-time<\/a> and for the first time in the county\u2019s history, they have won five championship games on the spin.<\/p>\n

At half-time in extra-time in Mullingar, the hosts trailed by half a dozen points, but from there on in it was all Westmeath.<\/p>\n

Senan Baker and Ronan Wallace raised orange flags, Kevin O\u2019Sullivan fired to the back of the net while Brandon Kelly and John Heslin added to their tally to seal a 1-31 to 3-21 victory.<\/p>\n

McHugh, in a memorable maiden year in charge of Westmeath, said his team were fully prepared for a Cavan ambush after the highs of provincial glory.<\/p>\n

\"Mark
\nMark McHugh celebrates with supporters after the full-time whistle<\/p>\n

“Relief,” he responded to RT\u00c9 Sport when asked for his primary emotion after another gripping contest. “Energy has been built up the past two weeks.<\/p>\n

“Those guys (Westmeath players) have got themselves into a position in a position where they can be very proud.<\/p>\n

“After the Leinster final, we felt there was a bit more in us. We knew Cavan were coming down for an ambush, no doubt about it. We played well in patches throughout the game.<\/p>\n

“We got to extra-time and it\u2019s pure and utter relief. I thought the game was gone in a period there in that first half, but with two-pointers, it\u2019s only three points (three two-pointers).<\/p>\n

“We said at half-time we would get shooters on the field and we got shooters on the field. We finished it out and there was only one team in that second half.<\/p>\n

“We are in the winner\u2019s pot now and that is exactly where we want to be.”<\/p>\n

His Cavan counterpart Dermot McCabe was pleased to see a positive response from his side following a below-par display in Ulster at the hands of Monaghan.<\/p>\n

\"Dermot
\nDermot McCabe addresses his Cavan players before throw-in<\/p>\n

McCabe, who 12 months ago was managing Westmeath with McHugh part of his backroom team, said he was well prepared for the Lake County\u2019s counter-attack and kickout strategies given his knowledge of the opposition players, but lamented his side couldn\u2019t get over the line in normal time at Cusack Park.<\/p>\n

“Towards the end of the 70 minutes, we probably had a lot of the flow of the game,” he said.<\/p>\n

“That was probably our biggest chance.<\/p>\n

“I know we did well in extra time, our efficient is still below 50%, but Westmeath are extremely accurate and got some very good scores.”<\/p>\n

Watch Mayo v Monaghan in the All-Ireland Football Championship first round on Sunday from 3.30pm on RT\u00c92 and RT\u00c9 Player. Follow our live blog on RT\u00c9.ie\/sport and RT\u00c9 News app and listen to Saturday Sport on RT\u00c9 Radio 1<\/p>\n

Watch The Saturday Game from 9.50pm and The Sunday Game from 9.30pm on RT\u00c92 and RT\u00c9 Player. Follow a live blog on all matches on the RT\u00c9 News app and on rte.ie\/sport<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"These are heady days for Westmeath football. Given there was a safety net for both themselves and Cavan…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":475428,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[61,60,112],"class_list":["post-475427","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-sports","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/475427","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=475427"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/475427\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/475428"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=475427"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=475427"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=475427"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}