By John Harrington

Westmeath footballer Kieran Martin admits the Lake County’s three successive relegations in the Allianz Football League have been hard to comprehend.

A Division One team in 2014, the Midlanders will ply their trade in Division Four of next year’s competition.

"I didn't think we'd ever be down at that level but, look, things happen like that,” says Martin.

“I suppose we're kind of unlucky the last two years the way different results went in the group. I remember John Heslin hit the post against Galway, the last kick of the game from a free (in 2015)…if he'd scored that, we would have stayed up (in Div 2).

"The fact that some club players went far enough in the club championship, they didn't come back 'til late January, February maybe – the likes of the Loman's lads, Athlone last year was the same, and that's the guts of ten to 12 players for our panel. It was kind of disjointed at the start and we were late starting.

"But, look, we're going to have a push this year. Division 4 – we need to get out of it if we do want to progress.”

It’s been a rapid and unexpected fall from grace in the Allianz League for what’s an undoubtedly talented group of Westmeath footballers, but in a way Martin believes they might benefit from playing Division Four in 2017.

"The way I see it, it's a great opportunity for us to play new lads on the panel – U-21 players who have just broken through and need the game experience, because they're not getting it either,” he says.

"We had a few lads last year who probably didn't play one league game and they were brought on in championship games…it's not a great way to introduce lads. So the fact that we might get the opportunity to play some of those lads, get the game experience and know what level they have to get to.

“Because we have great talent at underage, from the U21 scene, that have broken through. So to give them an opportunity to get games, especially because you don't want them sitting on the bench the whole year round.

"We're going to push hard to get out of Division 4 and, if we do, we do...but look, it’s not the end of the world."

The irony of Westmeath’s dreadful League form in recent years is that they’ve been impressive in the Championship.

They’ve established themselves as the second-best team in the province by reaching consecutive Leinster Finals in a row against Dublin in the last two years.

"At the end of the day it's all about championship,” says Martin. “You do want to get a basis right in the league. If you get good performances in the league and the results don't go your way, it doesn't matter – it's all about the performance.

"You want to get that performance right for championship, and that's where it matters.

"Going down two divisions in two years with two Leinster finals, it shows that we're getting something right for the championship. So we just have to try and prepare a bit better for the league.

“This year it's probably a bit better because we do have lads coming in that bit earlier – the likes of Loman's, and we'll have more of the Rosemount lads coming in because they lost the Leinster (intermediate) final.

“So it's about getting started at the right time and lads getting fit at the right time…we need everyone coming in at the same level for January and getting ready to go from there."

Westmeath’s raw potential as a team is evidenced by the fact they competed well against both of this year's All-Ireland finalists, Dublin and Mayo, for long stretches of their championship matches against them.

In the Leinster Final against Dublin they trailed by just a point at half-time, and in the qualifiers against Mayo they had cut an eight-point half-point deficit to just three by late in the second-half.

They failed to play consistently for the full 70 minutes in both matches though, and Martin admits they have to find a way to sustain a high level of performance.

"It's hard for a team to play well for a whole 70 minutes, but we always seem to do it for either one half or the other. That's what we're going to work on - see what went wrong in the halves that we didn't play well, and see what we did right in the halves that we did play well.

"You have to take the positives out of it. I think the second half against Mayo was probably the best football we played all year. We just went for it – we had to. And I think it's a good way to go at teams too, because they're not expecting it either.

"Like, we were a couple of points down against Kildare and we went for it, and within 10-15 minutes we were a couple of points up.

"So I think the management are looking at that as well, instead of trying to hold teams off. With Dublin it's a different situation, you have to try and work something.

"Now, it did work for the first half, but I think Dublin copped on to what we were doing and made a few changes, where they took off a back and brought on another forward. You're playing against seven forwards – and they're seven of the best forwards in the country!

"It's hard enough to deal with six, never mind trying to deal with seven of them.

"It's different things like that; management are learning too and we're learning as well. We have to learn that it's not going to work for the whole game. You will have situations where you're going to have to change it around, because teams are clever, they will cop on to what you're doing.

"So it's a matter of us learning what changes we have to make if teams do cop on, and getting them right."

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