Egan has vision of Westmeath winning Leinster crown

If old school visualisation still works in sports psychology then at least John Egan has something to go on. Not many people can visualise Westmeath beating Dublin on Sunday, although Egan has had the image of winning a Leinster football title in his head since he was 13 years old.

That's because in 2004, the first and still last time Westmeath won that title, Egan was one of their young supporters to run on to the pitch, leaping up on to players like Dessie Dolan and Denis Glennon as they embraced their moment of triumph.

Championship leaders

Egan looked up at the Hogan Stand as then Westmeath captain

David O'Shaughnessy

lifted the Delaney Cup for the first time in championship history.

“Yeah, I was 13, and probably one of the first fans onto the pitch,” recalls Egan. “And since that day, that is where we’ve all wanted to be. I remember as well looking at Denis Glennon, who was only 18 or 19 at the time, and just thinking ‘we have to be there one day’.

“And in my lifetime, this is only the second time a Westmeath team have got to play in a Leinster final. I can still picture everything about 2004, and I think that helps. I want to be looking up at that again, a Westmeath man, lifting the cup on Sunday.”

Easier visualised than done, naturally, although Egan, now 25, has already made a little piece of history of his own when featuring in Westmeath’s first ever championship win over Meath, in the Leinster semi-final, last Sunday week. Indeed he’s well positioned to reflect on the nature of that victory, too, given he was called in for the closing stages (replacing half forward Dennis Corroon), just as Westmeath soared past a tiring Meath.

“We never envisaged being eight or nine points down at half-time,” he says. “So we just had to come out and go for it. And we’ve always said that we’re a second-half team. I don’t know why that is.

"I think we struggled to make that breakthrough, back to five or six points. They (Meath) kept tacking on those extra scores. But I think we just got the run on them eventually. A few of the boys really stood up. Kieran Martin and John Heslin kicked some ridiculous scores as well.

“When I came on, for the last 10 minutes or so, we won three or four kick outs in-a-row and we tacked on the extra points. Then Meath had a couple of chances, when they were a point up, which they just didn’t take. After that it seemed that it was our day.”

Meath manager Mick O’Dowd admitted that with a little more maturity, his team would almost certainly have held out. Still, Egan reckons the Westmeath players always felt that could close that apparently unassailable gap on Meath

"We have unbelievable levels of fitness this year. So we knew we had the legs. Last year, in Division One, we seemed to fall away against the bigger teams, in the last 15, 20 minutes. So that was something we worked on, and is down to (Westmeath manager) Tom Cribbin. "

Meanwhile, the last week or so has been about coming down from the Meath victory, and thinking about how to stop Dublin from winning a 10th Leinster title in 11 years. Egan points back to the fact few of the current Westmeath panel had ever lost to Meath and they’ll bring a similar mentality to Croke Park on Sunday.

‘Unbeatable force’

“We weren’t thinking about Meath as this unbeatable force. It was just chance to get to a Leinster final. Some of the lads had never played at Croke Park before. We knew it was a big deal for the county, so we weren’t oblivious to it, but it was a help, for many of us, that it was our first time to play Meath in championship.

“Obviously it’s all about Dublin now, and that’s a different kettle of fish. If we’re as open as we were against Meath in the first half, against Dublin, the game could be over after 10 minutes.”

Not that Egan is visualising that.