Waiting game no longer Longford's way

Leinster SFC First round/Longford v Westmeath: Keith Dugganlooks at how Longford have rediscovered self-belief under former Westmeath manager Luke Dempsey

The GAA commonly face the complaint of failing to open the championship with a genuine thunderclap. This year's calendar has been no exception with the meeting of Longford and Westmeath moving some radio pundits to lament there wasn't something bigger and more glamorous on offer. If that was a slight, then Longford are used to it.

Either way, a live television billing on the opening day of the All-Ireland summer represents a dramatic improvement on so many of the seasons that have passed since the Leinster title last stopped in Goldsmith country. In any event, tomorrow's match is arguably the most democratic and appropriate note on which to begin the great championship quest.

Westmeath have been one of the great success stories of the new championship era. And the memories of Longford's escapades last year, against which Dublin came perilously close to a first-round exit, means this match is precisely what the early stage of the All-Ireland should be about - a border derby and a potential minor classic between counties that have worked hard to better themselves.

Regardless of what happens later on in the big dance, winning tomorrow will give Longford and Westmeath a satisfaction that will shorten the winter. A crowd of 6,000 showed up when Longford achieved a stunning victory against Derry in the qualifiers last summer. Tomorrow, there won't be a spare seat in the 16,000 Pearse Park and the RTÉ satellite vans will be regarded as a sign of the times that have visited Longford all too rarely.

"Players need profile and that sense of going somewhere," remarked Luke Dempsey on Tuesday evening. The laid-back schoolteacher, whose fingerprints are all over the critical breakthroughs in both Westmeath and Longford in recent years, sat in the Slashers clubhouse bar before training and considered the importance of this match.

"As a manager, I feel every year is an entity in its own right. Last year, we came up against Kerry and that brought our own run to an end. And maybe our lack of physique got shown up in that match. But still, we had a few great days and the players had the novelty of getting selected on to Leinster panels and getting trips abroad. And I knew it would take time to come back to earth and we had a fairly mixed league.

"But this is the championship again and the attention that this game brings should - and I say that carefully - it should give these guys a greater appetite to go out and achieve more. Our big job is to get into the heads of these Longford players and convince them that the rewards are there. There is no doubt that players like Paul Barden and Brian Kavanagh and Shane Mulligan know that. The trick is that the whole panel feel and believe that. And I suppose this match holds the answer to that question."

Longford have been among the counties criminally neglected down the years by the GAA championship structure. The lone Leinster championship title of 1968 has a stellar but lonely look about it, a blazing and incredible exception to a century of just taking part and of getting beaten sooner or later - and usually sooner.

Even in the years when Longford were decent, there were always one or two counties with a stronger hand.

"After Westmeath beat us in the first round of the championship of 1964, some of the players reared up because we had done very little preparation. And that was the beginning of it," says Séamus Flynn, the kit man and player liaison who was corner back on that historic Leinster winning team and on the Longford team which won the National League in 1966.

"Mick Higgins of Cavan came in as trainer and Fr McGee was manager. We lost to Dublin in the 1965 Leinster final but we had a good, strong team and we believed in ourselves after we won the league. That was a fine Galway team we beat. We won 0-9 to 0-8 and we held on to that one point for the last 15 minutes because Cyril Dunne was on the frees and he doesn't miss too many. We were terrified of fouling him.

"Of course, we celebrated too hard after that match and had Louth two weeks later in the championship. We should have sought a postponement but we didn't and got caught. It was a pity, an awful kick. I remember Bobby Byrne took a great shot for a goal and it hit the crossbar and came out about 20 yards and Louth came up and got a point. That kind of match."

In 1967 they lost to Offaly in the provincial semi-final after a replay but they continued to push themselves. By 1968, Longford were hardened by disappointment and utterly self-reliant. In Tullamore, they dispatched a Dublin team containing Jimmy Keaveney, Des Foley and Cathal O'Leary by a goal. They followed that up with a five-point win over All-Ireland champions Meath. And they behaved like they owned Croke Park in the Leinster final, winning the championship with 11 points to spare over Laois.

They prepared against Kerry as though oblivious to their own tradition.

"I know this sounds strange," smiles Flynn, lean and agile and, as usual, the first to arrive at the ground for the training session, "but we fully believed we would beat Kerry. The big setback was that we lost Jimmy Flynn, one of the best midfielders in the game at that time. And Seán Murray, our senior man and our leader, was also injured. Then Pat Burke, who was in for Seán, fractured his elbow in the early stage of the match. A county like Longford cannot afford to lose three men of that calibre."

Mick O'Connell gave an exhibition of high fielding in the first half and the novice Leinster champions talked about an eight-point disadvantage at half-time. That soon became nine when the match resumed.

Then Longford did what few football teams have done to Kerry in the history of championship football. They hit 2-5 on the spin. They went two points up and demanded of Kerry all the grit and composure of the ascendancy just to pull through. Flynn marked Mick O'Dwyer and held him to a point but the Kingdom finished strongly, hitting four late points to win by two. That was it.

"Longford have not stepped beyond the confines of Leinster since. Although they have a strong border rivalry with Westmeath, the counties did not meet after that 1965 affair until 1981, when Westmeath prevailed easily. When they were paired up again in 1988, Brendan Hackett was in charge of a promising team including John McCormack and Dessie Barry, Cathal Lee and Joe McCabe. There was something there and Hackett and company had them superbly organised. Famously, they led Dublin by three points with 20 minutes to go in a Leinster semi-final in Croke Park. They lost in the end by 18 points.

"It was the old thing of the killer goal coming at precisely the wrong time," remembered Hackett this week. "We had worked so hard and that moment was a real hit in the solar plexus. Suddenly the lead was erased and we trailed by a few points and the old doubts just came flooding in. Once we went four or five points down, you could see that guys were resigned to losing and just wanted out of there."

Given Hackett's work in the field of psychology, he is the first to admit the decades of oppression, that sense of being an afterthought in the championship scene, has weighed heavily on generations of Longford teams. "That is residual and it is a traditional problem for Longford football."

But he also points out that as a small county with a population of just 31,000 people, Longford find it hard to field a team sufficiently strong in all sectors. There are almost always some very good footballers in the county. The problem is they don't always belong to the same generation. When Dempsey took over, he would drive over to training and sense not so much resignation as an acceptance that Longford could not ever really prevail. He used to wonder aloud what they could do to lift the place.

There is no question Longford is a GAA county, with thriving clubs like Clongish and no fewer than five floodlit facilities. But it has been allowed to become a private affair, based on club rivalries. Last summer proved at least that Longford had a voice on the national stage and a right to contest against the "better" counties.

"It did remind me of what we achieved in Westmeath and just to see that spirit and the atmosphere that came on the back of a few wins was marvellous," he says now. "People care for the game here as much as they do in any other county."

The great shame of the championship was that Longford did not get to play Kerry in Pearse Park. The Kingdom might well have prevailed, but just hosting the great county would have made Longford feel included and important.

And so they start the summer in the same position as any other county. They won't put the fear of God into anyone by size alone but they have some skilful ball players and a smart, serious manager and are no longer anyone's soft touch in Pearse Park.

That old feeling of repression is gone - for the time being at least.

"Definitely, there is the sense that Leinster has evened out and that no county is significantly stronger than the rest," says Hackett. It is a fairly open competition.

"For Longford, the trick is to create a bit of momentum and get on a run. I think the team will put an awful lot into trying to beat Westmeath, and after that well we'll have to wait and see."

Waiting. Séamus Flynn and the boys of 1968 have been doing that for too long. Tomorrow brings another championship and a full house at Pearse Park, and for one afternoon, anyway, Longford are at the epicentre of the championship.

That alone is something worth shouting about.

Last Year's SFC Matches

Longford

Leinster Quarter-final Dublin 1-12 Longford 0-13

Qualifier Round one Longford 1-16Waterford 1-9

Qualifier Round two Longford 1-23Waterford 1-10

Qualifier Round three Longford 1-16Derry 2-12

Qualifier Round four Kerry 4-11 Longford 1-11

Played 5, Won 3, Lost 2

Westmeath

Leinster Round one Offaly 0-15 Westmeath 0-11

Qualifier Round one Westmeath 0-20London 0-8

Qualifier Round two Westmeath 0-13Limerick 1-9

Qualifier Round three Westmeath 1-12Sligo 0-14

Qualifier Round four Westmeath 1-8Galway 0-10

All-Ireland quarter-final Dublin 1-12 Westmeath 0-5

Played 6, Won 4, Lost 2