Coulter: Saffrons “well warned” ahead of Westmeath clash

By Shaun Casey

ANTRIM and Westmeath had very different National League campaigns, but their round three meeting went right down to the wire and joint manager Martin Coulter says the Saffron’s won’t be taking their Leinster opponents lightly.

Antrim claimed the Division 1B league title, winning all six of their games, including the final, while Westmeath finished bottom of the pile with five consecutive defeats seeing them relegated to Division 2A.

But when the sides met in March, there was only three-points between them when the referee called for the ball, so Antrim have been “well warned” not to take their eye off the ball. “It’s a tricky tie,” said Coulter, who manages the team alongside Carl McCormick.

“We played them in the National League, and it was a very, very competitive game in Ballycastle. We’re under no illusions that this is going to be a difficult tie, especially going down to Westmeath.

“We’ll prepare accordingly because we’ve been well warned from the league game with them that they are to be taken very seriously. To be fair, the game was played back in March when the weather wasn’t great.

“The teams didn’t have much game time under their belt. We have a very new and young and hungry squad, so we used the league campaign to bleed a lot of new players and on the day, I think we made four or five changes to the team.

“To be fair to Westmeath, they travelled up and performed very well against us. They’re very fit and very aggressive and we struggled to cope with them at times as the scoreline would have reflected on the day, so we’ll need to be on our guard and that’s how we’re looking at it.”

Antrim got their campaign off to the best possible start when they defeated Offaly two weeks ago. “It was a big win to be honest; Offaly are tipped by many as one of the favourites in the competition so to beat them in the first round gets us off to a great start.

“With two games to comes, it’s all in our own hands. Had we lost that first game then you’re chasing your tails a wee bit in the competition.”

Coulter is delighted that his side will have a full hand to pick from when they travel to the midlands and although they will be without Colleen Patterson due to a long-term injury, they’ll hope to have everyone else.

“We’ve been very fortunate, we do have one girl out long term,” he continued. “Colleen Patterson is rehabbing an ACL and has been all year. Her club colleague Dervla Cosgrove, she was performing brilliantly throughout the league.

“She picked up a bit of a calf tear, but she started training back this week which is a very positive sign but other than that, everyone else is in good form and overall, when we’ve 29 players, that’s a very fortunate place to be injury wise.”