It was approaching mid-day when his phone buzzed. As a 59-year-old man whose life revolves around supporting Westmeath GAA, you'd have expected him to be conditioned to hardship at this stage of his life. But despite a lifetime of persecution, he still found himself in the horrors as he got up from his chair to see who was trying to contact him. Gerry Buckley was hurting.
A team which once stood for all he believed in now stood for nothing except the national anthem. They'd lost harrowingly to Meath, Down and Cavan and were staring down the barrel of a second, straight relegation.
And if it is the nature of fans to identify hope where none may exist, then it is also in their DNA to go through a grieving process after each defeat, which was why Gerry found himself in deep mourning on this Wednesday morning as he picked up his mobile to read the following text:
"Gerry, I promise my target is to deliver your dream and it's our main goal to beat Louth, Wexford and then Meath in Croke Park. You probably think I am mad, but if I don't achieve this I feel I will have underachieved, and I don't stay where I am not making progress and delivering on my full potential. I know how passionate you are and how much it hurts you when we underperform. Tom."
The 'Tom' in question was Tom Cribbin, a man Buckley had befriended 33 years ago and had recommended for the job when the vacancy arose last year.
He has nine county titles on his CV, won with Clane and Edenderry, as well as the experience of two stints on the inter-county scene with Laois and Offaly before politics got in the way. “It’s like this with me,” he said, “I would probably have liked to have stayed with Laois a while longer but when it doesn’t fall right for you, it’s probably in the best interests of the county and the players to move on.
“It’s not about Tom Cribbin. If the same thing happens in Westmeath - whether it’s after a year, two years, or three years – and I’m not progressing in the right way, they won’t have to ask me to go. I’ll be the first one to ring the chairman and say, ‘look, I’m not getting through to the lads, I’m not getting the best out of them’, and I’ll recommend him to replace me.”
Westmeath went on to beat Meath in the Championship for the first timeThe day he sent that text to Gerry Buckley could have been one of those self-appraisal moments – and sure enough, four days later, when relegation to Division Three was confirmed with a heavy defeat at home to Roscommon, he cut loose.
“There’s a few big players just not performing for us and I don’t know why or what’s wrong,” said Cribbin.
“You need your big players to perform if you’re going to deliver. When you’re seeing the likes of young Killian Daly as probably one of your best players, you’re expecting poor young Shane Dempsey to come on and win matches when you have senior players, that’s f***ing not on.
“Excuse my language, but this isn’t going to happen. These big players are not standing up. I don’t know why or what’s going on with them. You saw the other lads and they just put everything on the line, lads that are general average players. But the few big lads who should be standing out leading, f**king lay down. And that's the real trouble with this team - there’s hard questions to be asked and answered in the next week or two because we may just have to go on without a clatter of these players and start working on these young lads for the future.”
Ordinarily when managers revert to this tactic, their follow-up sentence usually begins with the words, ‘I’d like to tender my resignation’. With Cribbin, though, it was different. He took the team away for a weekend in Breaffy, reportedly got his wallet out to show the generous side to his nature and addressed the issues head-on.
If his words impressed, then so did his actions. On a run up Croagh Patrick, he passed by the entire team.
That subliminal message was reinforced by the introduction of Adrian Harrison, a sports psychologist, who started addressing the real issues affecting the team – how too many of them were small-town heroes and big-time Charlies. And then the results turned. Heading into the Louth game, Cribbin broke from the age-old tradition of GAA managers and refused to talk up the opposition, instead delivering four key reasons why his side could win.
The policy was clear. For a team lacking in confidence, and who had just been publicly humiliated by their manager, they needed to know he still believed them. “We have good players,” Cribbin said. “People need to remember that. They probably got into a rut last year. Then a lot of things went wrong for them, but that doesn’t make them a bad team. In 2013, they qualified for Division One with a game to spare. They were very young then and I think there is a lot of potential in Westmeath. Even looking at the team that got to the Division Three final in 2011 and then got to the Division Two final in 2013, the age profile is very good.”
So too was their second half performance against Louth. They outscored their opponents by six points in that second period, a taster of what was to come against Wexford, who they outscored 1-9 to 0-1 in the last 15 minutes and then Meath, who were blown away over the last 20 minutes by 2-8 to 0-1.
Westmeath's players celebrate at Croke Park. Photo: INPHO.“Everyone stood up in the second half,” said Westmeath captain Ger Egan. “And it shows the character, the belief and the desire that Tom and his backroom team have brought into our set-up. We’re going to a Leinster final and we’re going there to win.”
Few think they will. Dublin, under Jim Gavin, have played eight Leinster SFC matches, and won six of them by 16 points or more. “They need to push on, though,” Tommy Carr, the former Dublin manager, who now lives in Mullingar, said of Westmeath in an interview with the Evening Herald. “They can’t say, ‘that’s it, great year, we have beaten Meath. The whole idea is to build on that.”
While no trophies have been delivered, the fact that Cribbin has guided Westmeath to a Leinster final cannot be overlooked. After all, only three managers have achieved this before. Plus he has done something that no one else has managed - a Championship victory over Meath, their bitter rivals.
Five minutes after that final whistle, Buckley's phone buzzed once more. This time the sender was Ned Flynn, a native of Castlepollard and probably the only man alive who is more passionate about Westmeath GAA than Gerry Buckley.
Ned's health hasn't been good recently, so much so that a trip to hospital took priority over one to Croke Park. Yet from his sick-bed, he got to see the Meath game on television and got to convey his feelings in a succinct text message to Buckley. "Sick. Nearly dead. Now alive."
Everyone is Westmeath feels that way.
