Brendan Hackett's reign as Westmeath manager got off to a winning start last night when a late two-goal salvo gave his new-look team a 2-12 to 0-12 victory in a SF challenge against Cavan at Kingspan Breffni Park. In a game played over three 25-minute periods on Breffni Park's new synthetic pitch, Tommy Carr's Cavan team dominated the early exchanges and with former Dublin underage star Gareth 'Nesty' Smith, John McCutcheon and Raymond Galligan to the fore, they had eased into a 0-10 to 0-4 lead by the midway stage of the second period. But with both teams ringing the changes throughout, the home side fell apart in the final third when they were outscored by 2-5 to 0-4, with two of the Westmeath goals from newcomers Stephen Bracken and Ronan Doolin coming in the dying minutes. The new Westmeath boss will be delighted with the workout, especially as he has yet to hold a single training session outdoors due to the November/December collective training ban and the recent freezing conditions. "We had a trial game at the end of October, and we managed one further trial game the week before Christmas, to finalise a panel," he said. "And that's been it. The only thing we managed since was one training session in a sports hall, which wasn't very satisfactory, and something we wouldn't do again. The bottom line is that we've had no training session whatsoever on the pitch. "First of all, the pitches were all waterlogged, with the heavy rain. Since the week before Christmas all the pitches were frozen. And with the roads the way they were we couldn't even get together." Tweet

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