Peter Smith was one of the leading footballers in Westmeath during the 1980s and early 1990s. Here, we take a look back at the career of the former Mullingar Shamrocks star who has remained involved in the GAA with his adopted club Skerries Harps. Sometimes Peter Smith wishes he was 10 years younger. If he was, he would almost certainly have played a part in Westmeath's historic Leinster football championship success in 2004. It's widely acknowledged that the seeds for that breakthrough success were sown a decade earlier during Mattie Kerrigan's tenure as Lake County manager. In 1992, just a few weeks before Westmeath were due to play in the first round of the Leinster championship, the Summerhill man agreed to take on what was then regarded as one of the least desirable positions in inter-county football. Westmeath beat Carlow before going on to give the Mick O'Dwyer-managed Kildare a big fright in the provincial semi-final. Westmeath continued to improve over the next few years with the highpoint of the Kerrigan era being the sensational National League quarter-final victory over All-Ireland champions Derry on Easter Sunday 1994. But sadly for Smith, his Westmeath career was coming to a close around then and he would never know what it was like to experience the thrill of winning a Leinster championship in the maroon jersey. "It was a great feeling to be a Westmeath supporter in Croke Park that day - as a player I always believed that Westmeath could win a Leinster championship but it didn't happen in my time and that was probably the biggest regret I had in football," Peter says. "But that's the way it goes and you've got to accept these things. There are hundreds of other footballers who never won anything with Westmeath, but at least now we can all say that we saw the county winning a Leinster title." He adds: "You could sense that a breakthrough wasn't far away during Mattie Kerrigan's time. Along with the likes of Carthage Conlon and Mattie Corcoran, he got the thing moving along and gave us the belief that we could compete at the highest level. And it was nice to see some of the lads who were starting out around the same time as I was finishing up going on to win Leinster medals." Though small in stature, Smith was a highly-effective player who began his playing career as a wing back before switching to corner back. After making his senior debut for Westmeath in 1987, he was forced to put his inter-county career on hold before resuming in 1990 and playing on until '94. "I was first called up to the Westmeath team in 1987 after captaining Shamrocks to victory over Moate in the county final, but I then got a job in London and lived over there until 1990. I continued playing football with Garryowen, but it wasn't the same as playing for Shamrocks or Westmeath," he explains. Growing up on Harbour Street, Mullingar, Peter spent countless hours playing football with his school friends in nearby Cusack Park. "My house was literally only a kick of a ball away from the Park and that's where I spent all of my summers playing football with the other young lads from the area. "Johnny McCormack, the groundsman, used to run us out, but I found a way around that by getting the job of scoreboard keeper from Paddy Collins!" Peter played all grades of football for Mullingar Shamrocks and also played hurling with St. Oliver Plunkett's up to minor level. He regards himself as very fortunate to have come through the Shamrocks underage system at a time when the club was extremely successful. "We had a great bunch of players and won every championship from under 14 upwards. A lot of the lads went on to play senior for the club and enjoyed plenty of success there as well," he recalls. Smith made his senior debut for Shamrocks as a 17-year-old in their 1982 county championship semi-final defeat to Athlone. He became a regular after that, but had to wait until 1986 to win his first senior championship medal when Shamrocks defeated The Downs by 1-11 to 2-5. They retained the Flanagan Cup the following year at Moate's expense, with Peter as captain. Smith resumed his Mullingar Shamrocks and Westmeath career in 1990 and was once again to the fore as Shamrocks claimed another senior title following a 2-7 to 2-6 victory over Coralstown/Kinnegad. They surrendered their crown to Athlone in '91 before bouncing back to win four-in-a-row between '92 and '95. Peter played in the '92, '93 and '94 final wins over Athlone, Rosemount and Tyrrellspass respectively, but was a notable absentee from the '95 team, having left the club at the end of the previous campaign. "I had moved to Skerries by then and decided to throw in my lot with them after the 1994 county final. I played with Skerries Harps for six years and am still involved with them as coach to their under 12 and under 15 teams," he says. Married to Skerries woman Anne-Marie, Peter has three sons - Jack (15), Eoin (12) and Stephen (10). The boys all play for Skerries Harps, which is the club of star Dublin centre back Bryan Cullen, and Jack was part of the Dublin development squad last year. Peter was just a couple of years older than Jack is now when he played in Westmeath's 1982 Leinster minor final loss to the Metropolitans at Croke Park. He subsequently played for UCD, where he studied Engineering, for three years and played at right half back on their 1985 Sigerson Cup winning team. "We beat Queen's University in the final and had some outstanding players on board, including Dermot Flanagan from Mayo, Noel McCaffrey from Dublin and Bill Sex from Kildare, who later became a team-mate of mine at Mullingar Shamrocks. I was one of three Westmeath men on the team - Senan Maguire from The Downs played in goal and Mick Lynam from Rosemount was corner forward." Smith achieved limited success with Westmeath, with his only reward being a National League Division 4 medal in 1994. "As I said already, things were only starting to happen for Westmeath around that time. We beat Longford in a play-off before going on to record that famous win over Derry in the league quarter-final at Enniskillen when Larry Giles scored two goals. "That earned us a big day out against Meath in Croke Park and after matching them all the way, we just fell short in the last few minutes when the extra man they had (Westmeath had Michael Broder controversially sent off at the start of the second half) began to tell," he says. Peter is employed by the HSE (Health Service Executive) as their assistant national director for estates. Head of estates is Brian Gilroy, whose brother Pat won an All-Ireland medal with Dublin in 1995 and was a member of the St. Vincent's team that defeated Tyrrellspass in last December's Leinster club football final at Cusack Park. The HSE is responsible for managing and maintaining a very substantial estates portfolio. The HSE recently established a new office with specific responsibility for managing the estates portfolio, including the organisation's ?10 billion capital infrastructure and the annual capital plan. Tweet

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