After relegation to Division 4, few were giving Wicklow much of a chance against a Westmeath side, who rose to Division 2, but Garden County boss Oisín McConville felt the "unbelievable footballers" in his side were full value for their Leinster SFC preliminary round win in Portlaoise.
In the end, Wicklow ran out one-point winners at MW Hire O'Moore Park, this after leading by seven at the break and then withstanding late pressure from the Lake County as they strove to keep their provincial dreams alive.
Despite a league campaign that only yielded one win from seven, McConville felt the form shown throughout February and March was not an indicator of his team's true worth.
On that point, he told RTÉ Sport: "It has been a tough year. We found it really difficult to get results. Our performances have probably been better than what they suggested so we knew there was a performance like this in us.
"Some of the results have been disappointing, some of the performances have been disappointing. But this is them. This is their identity.
"They'll give you absolutely everything until they can’t give you anymore and that’s what they did today.
"When you want to perform at your optimum is when championship comes around and I thought, today, considering the things that went against us, lost a defender to a black card, one to what I thought was a pretty poor tackle, Malachy [Stone] who wasn’t fit to play after getting sent off the last day, we just dug in and won the battles.
"When we needed to win the ball in the middle of the field we won it. That’s a big change from where we have been over the last number of weeks."
The Armagh All-Ireland winner went on to praise the way his troops dealt with the expected late onslaught from Westmeath.
"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," he added.
"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."
Next up for the Garden County is a date with Kildare; the pair also met in the 2023 championship.
McConville is relishing another crack off the Lilywhites.
"Last year we felt we did okay for large periods of that game and we ended up getting beaten by ten points. So that’s the quality we’re up against.
"Kildare bounced back really last year from disappointment in the league and I’m sure they are focused on trying to do that [again].
"They’ve had a look at us now and an extra week off but none of that really matters to us, this is about us today. We did enough to get across the line today and we’re looking forward to next week. Why would we not?"
For Westmeath, today's reverse puts their place in the Sam Maguire race in jeopardy and they'll be watching results over the next few weeks to see whether they'll remain in that group of 16.
Their manager Dessie Dolan was naturally a bit downbeat that his side won't get an extended run in the province this year.
"You want to get a decent run in the Leinster championship and that didn't happen, so we’re very disappointed.
"Right now, it’s just trying to process that and then we’ll have to figure out what our next move is.
"Wicklow deserve a lot of credit. They dug in hard in the first half and got a couple of scores.
"We struggled to break them down and one point at half-time is not enough.
"They set up very well, defended hard and were very honest in their effort. We struggled to score and that’s it in a nutshell.
"In fairness to the lads, in the second half they tried to throw a lot at it. But the goal in the second half was a real sucker punch, it just bounced in the square and ended up in the back of the net and we had to go again."
