Wicklow boss Oisin McConville hailed his players after yesterday’s shock win over Westmeath in the Leinster senior football championship.

After building up a seven-point lead by half-time in Portlaoise, the Garden County held out for a 2-9 to 1-11 victory against the recently crowned Division 3 champions to progress towards a provincial quarter-final date with Kildare.

Speaking to RTE Sport afterwards, McConville described the mindset of his group as being “spot on”.

"We were holding on, there’s no doubt about it and we know the quality that they have and the players they brought off the bench strengthened them," the 2002 All-Ireland winner said.

"Everybody will point to the fact that we were 8-1 up at half-time, and the wind, but it wasn’t even about that, it was about we addressed the game and our mindset going in.

"Our mindset was spot on. We put a big couple of weeks in and it bore fruit today.

"We’ve set out to do that [frustrate teams] a few times this year and it hasn’t worked for us but it did today because everybody was focused and knew what their job was. From that point on our quality shone through.

"You can talk about heart and desire but we have some unbelievable footballers in there too."

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