Pat Flanagan admits the manner of his dismissal as Westmeath football manager remains a sore point with him.

The new Offaly boss was ousted from the Lake County hot-seat last year, despite bringing the team to Division 1 of the Allianz League. He was subsequently snapped up by Sligo and was offered a further two-year term by the Yeats County after leading them to the last 12 of this year's championship.

However, the opportunity to manage his native county proved too difficult to resist and he was appointed as Emmett McDonnell's successor earlier this month.

"Devastated is a strong term to use, but I was devastated because I put a serious amount of work into it and I always said what Westmeath needed to do was to get to Division 1 and stay there for a number of years," Flanagan said in an in-depth interview in this week's Tullamore Tribune.

"They hadn't history behind them. They won one Leinster championship and their minor results hadn't been great over the previous 10-12 years. I felt the best way forward was to get to Division 1 and stay there. We achieved that.

"Unfortunately, we played Dublin and they beat us by 16 points in the championship, but they beat Kildare as well by 16 points a couple of weeks later. To this day, I am still not sure why it happened the way it did. All I was told was that basically, they needed a new voice in the dressing-room."

Flanagan insists he took no pleasure from the recent managerial appointment fiasco in the Lake County, only saying that it was "disappointing to see the whole process fall asunder".

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