PAUL CAFFREY sat down in the new-fangled Croke Park press room and watched with bemusement as the media took their time to lay out an array of recording devices on the table in front of him, like a smorgasbord of Sony. When at last he spoke he was Pillar-like in the extreme.

"I'm very proud of our fellas," he said. "Different things were asked of them today by the circumstances of the game. They showed massive steel and resilience to withstand the number of injuries we took and the number of changes we made.

"Great credit to the Westmeath lads. In the league final we felt that we had a good team out there and a team which we thought was good enough to win the league. It wasn't. That is where it is.

"All during the game it was helter-skelter. For a long time positions meant very little; both teams had periods of dominance; both teams missed a lot of chances - from open play and frees. For anybody who remembers that day, it was like 04. I was wondering, is it going to be déjà vu. Maybe this dressingroom has taken that day on board. When the big calls were made today lads made the decisions with clear heads."

Caffrey and his sideline could take credit for a series of switches which were forced on them early on by the effectiveness of Westmeath's tactics and a couple of injuries. Paul Casey on Dessie Dolan didn't work as such but just about everything else did.

The worries in the Dublin dressingroom afterwards centred more on their hobbling wounded. Bernard Brogan had gone down as if assassinated in the middle of performing a solo run. Shane Ryan's face kept hitting the hard and bony bits of Westmeath men.

"Bernard Brogan has a hamstring, which is very unlucky for him, but there are three weeks to look into it before Wexford; lot of sore bodies down there. We will judge it week by week as we go along."

Ryan made various excursions in and out of the game, getting the bridge of his nose stitched back together. Himself, Ciarán Whelan and Eamonn Fennell all got a good chunk of playing time under their belts.

Caffrey was unsurprised by the questions asked of his side yesterday. "Westmeath were always going to pose a different set of problems. Everybody playing knows that Westmeath's defensive mechanism is hard to play against. They keep a team down to 11 or 12 points. That is pleasing from our perspective.

"Our conversion rate could have been better today. It's difficult doing cold analysis now. We have Wexford ahead. Wexford are a big success story. Wexford haven't been beaten in a competitive game this year.

"It is up to us to come up with something to counter the fantastic brand of football that they are playing. We will have that cold forensic examination during the week."

One fact on the table before the postmortem begins: "Thirteen points won't win a Leinster final."

Tomás Ó Flatharta was sanguine enough in defeat. His side had played well and but for a few fluffed lines at the end could have taken something away for themselves: "It could have been a draw or we could have won. We got chances and we didn't take them. In games like this you learn that you have to take your chances and that is something we had to learn really."

He didn't attribute the errant shooting to stage fright at having to play into the Hill. Sometimes things just don't go right.

"We kicked good scores into the canal and again early in the second we kicked well. Whatever happened to us then it is hard to put our finger on it but it cost us.

"A lot of people talked about the understrength Dublin team we played in the league final. Those people forget we were understrength too. David Duffy and Dessie Dolan were missing. So we took a lot of confidence from that. I felt we had prepared very well for this. Our performances in the league gave us great confidence. We were well prepared coming in, we knew what we had to do. Our work rate, our intensity, the hunger our defenders had, we can't fault them for anything."

With the qualifiers looming, Ó Flatharta is faced with clearing away the dejection in time to lift his side for the challenges ahead.

"I suppose at the moment we are all very dejected. It is one we left go. It is our desire to get back on the road again. We have shown we have a lot of character. After a few days we will start preparing again. There are some massive teams in the qualifiers; we would hope to be one of those as well."

Quite a few managers will be looking at those qualifiers and saying the same.