There is a new jauntiness about Westmeath football this season and much of it has to do with the new kids, the choice five from the All-Ireland-winning under-21 side who are now turning out for the senior team.

They first danced in front of the national consciousness in the run-up to that underage final against Kerry, which had been scheduled in close proximity to the senior team's Leinster championship preliminary-round fixture against Carlow last month.

Given that the entire county was bubbling on the back of the under-21s' smooth dismissal of every team they had met, the fixture clash presented senior manager Brendan Lowry and his under-21 counterpart Luke Dempsey with something of a dilemma. Ultimately, Lowry named four of them - David O'Shaughnessy, Des Dolan, Aidan Canning and Fergal Murray - in his team-sheet but they were controversially "pulled" prior to kick off.

As it turned out, that decision was a blessing - the GAA's bungled method of communication led to Niall Barrett, an experienced and respected referee, drawing red cards with the reckless abandon of a saloon gunslinger. Westmeath could well have found themselves without the famous five for the following Saturday's under-21 final. The outcry that followed the carding fiasco overshadowed the snap withdrawal of the younger players but in the days that followed the question arose as to why they had been named on the original team. And had they been pulled after promptings from the county board?

Brendan Lowry rightfully declared his unhappiness that the fixture clash had forced his hand, but he stressed that the withdrawal of the players had been down to the senior team management alone. Westmeath emerged with the honours from the Carlow game - after a lengthy period of uncertainty and a doomed Carlow appeal - and the under-21s cut swathes through Kerry as they claimed the county's first under21 crown.

It was a pivotal moment in the emergence of the county - previously solid but lagging a bit behind the big provincial powers - as a potential major player in Leinster football.

Whereas the rise of young, prodigiously-talented teams within any given county can often be at the expense of the more lack-lustre senior set-up, the Westmeath panels seemed to complement each other.

"That's the way it's always been," said Luke Dempsey this week. "The under-21 players were always made available to the senior squad and even though there were times that an injury might have made them unavailable for under-21 games, it did help in the development of their game."

And the benefits of this mutual co-operation were all too evident a couple of weeks ago, when Westmeath toppled a Longford side seemingly on the verge of a youthbased renaissance of their own. Numerous national newspaper reports cited each of the four under-21 players as the key influences on that game, with the diminutive, quick corner back Fergal Murray and the razor-sharp forward Des Dolan winning favourable reviews.

But as well as giving the senior team added dimensions in terms of midfield class (O'Shaughnessy), defensive solidity (Canning and Murray) and lethal armoury (Dolan), the presence of the under-21s has also brought intangible benefits. The four starters, along with Michael Ennis, the fifth under-21 star to get the senior call, are used to winning and they carry an infectious sense of belief. They are also unfazed by tradition.

They have joined a panel that has been unsuccessful in recent years, facing elimination at the first round for the past three seasons, against Dublin, Offaly and Laois. (They pushed Offaly to a replay the year that Tommy Lyons's team took the Leinster Crown).

This year, they have already dismissed two championship opponents and have been preparing for Laois on a wave of feel-good expectation. Ironically, Laois are a team who have been churning out glittering underage teams of their own for half a decade now without any sign that their talents will trickle through to senior level. It has begun to look as though the senior and underage set-ups in the county are two distinct, even rival, factions. Westmeath had the bones of a decent team before the emergence of the younger bunch. Now, they have youngsters who can eventually mould them into real contenders.

"They are a joy to coach and we had plenty of fun, but they were all incredibly serious about winning," says Dempsey about the under-21s. And if Westmeath do make it past Laois, it is possible that Brendan Lowry will draw upon the services of one or two other under-21 players. Thus far, they have given Westmeath a potency and the county is buzzing ominously right now.