Inside Track: There’s more than a trophy at stake on Sunday

There’s more than the Delaney Cup on offer on Sunday. The draw for the Sam Maguire Cup, for which Louth had qualified prior to reaching the Leinster final, has been made, and the feeling is that whichever side wins the title will have an easier passage in the All-Ireland preliminaries.

To explain first what happens after the four provincial finals are decided. There’ll be 16 teams, including the eight provincial finalists, 2022 Tailteann Cup winners Westmeath, and seven others chosen on the strength of their National League performance.

These will be split into four groups of four, each played on a league basis, guaranteeing all teams three games. The winners of each league go directly to the All-Ireland quarter-finals, while the teams that finish second and third will play off to decide the other four quarter-finalists.

This is a new innovation which to this writer is unnecessarily convoluted. Would it not be better to have 16 teams involved in a straightforward knock-out?

Anyway, should Louth win on Sunday, they’ll go into a group along with Roscommon, Kildare and Sligo. However, if it doesn’t work out against Dublin, Mickey Harte’s team will have Mayo, Cork and Kerry.

Each team will have a home game, an away game and one played at a neutral venue. As so often asked before when Louth had a home game, where will it be played. As was said at last week’s County Board meeting, it will have to be played at a neutral venue, probably Navan’s Pairc Tailteann.

Much as the Louth management would probably like to have the game in Pairc Mhuire, where their team did so well in the league, the Ardee venue wouldn’t get Croke Park approval because of its capacity limit of 2,600.