Inside Track: This is yet another plea to get that monkey off our backs

This being a year ending in 3, Mickey Harte should perhaps get me involved with his team for Sunday’s match. Maybe only as an uisce maor or a luggage-loader.

Regarding the latter, I live close to from where the Blue Anchor buses set sail for each match carrying the Louth team, and I know Seamus Keenan well. I could be good at the job.

My football career may not have been highly distinguished, or even middlingly (if there’s such a word) distinguished, but in 1963 and then ten years later, I had my name – and photo – in the Democrat as a Louth team member. They were winning teams – of games, not competitions. This, of course, is 2023.

The good old Dundalk Gaels won the Minor Championship in 1962, and because I’d been on the county under-18 team that year, I got the nod over two other Gaels players, my old buddy, P J Loughran, and Paddy Connolly (since sadly deceased), when it came to choosing a captain for the following year’s county team.

That’s how it was then in all grades, a member of the championship-winning team from the previous year being given the county captaincy.

It sounds good to say I led my team to a first-round win over Wicklow and then another in our quarter-final with Kildare, both games played at Croke Park. But we were then routed by who else but Dublin in the semi-final.

Joe Carroll: A game like no other as Louth head back to Croke Park

Seamus Kirk was on the team, as well as Benny Gaughran and Harry McCarthy, along with four others who have since gone to their reward– Eugene McKenna, Roddy McGahon, Tom Joe Coleman and Patrick O’Reilly (son of former County Board chairman, JL Reilly.)

A decade on and I was back in Croker, this time as goalkeeper and assistant to team manager, Jimmy Mulroy. Why Mulroy had chosen me at the beginning of the year I don’t really know, but much easier to understand was his choice of trainer, his long-time Newtown Blues colleague, Liam Leech.

If I was looking for a boost starting out in my new role, I certainly didn’t get it from a former county player when I met him on a Dundalk Street on the evening my appointment was announced. He wasn’t obviously pleased with what the County Board had decided.

“Well,” he said, “the three of you are in for three years, and if you don’t do anything in that time you should be thrown (not the word he used) out.”

As it turned out, we took off at a race of knots, winning our last three games in the National League, then beating Meath in the O’Byrne Cup and after that, Carlow in the championship, the only time a game in that competition was played at the Dowdallshill grounds.

That qualified us for a second-round game with Dublin at Navan. This wasn’t seen as such a daunting task, as the Dubs were going through a very bad patch, not having played in a Leinster final in eight years, never mind winning one.

The tie went to two games, and we were lucky to get a second chance, Bartle Faulkner coming up with a late equaliser. I let in a penalty, taking a chance by going to my right, and looking back in horror to see the taker, Frank Murray’s scuffed shot trickle over the line.

Joe Carroll: Many Louth players’ lineage filled with winners

We did better in the replay, winning comfortably enough. It wasn’t seen as such a big win at the time, but as the years have trickled by – 50 of them – it has grown in significance.

You see, there hasn’t been a Louth win over Dublin in the championship since then, and to repeat a question asked in this column a few weeks ago, could there be a better time to set the record straight than next Sunday? There have been a number of meetings since and a few gallant Louth performances, but the advantage remains heavily in the Dubs’ favour.

An aside to that story: The recently-deceased Jimmy Grey was Dublin County Board chairman at the time, and he knew something had to be done.

So he knocked on Kevin Heffernan’s door. The captain of the 1958 All-Ireland winning team had been involved as a selector in the late 1970s; but if he agreed to Grey’s request, this time he’d be manager.

What happened after that is part of the GAA’s rich tapestry. Two great rivalries emerged, Dublin and Kerry on the field, Heffernan and O’Dwyer on the sideline.

Back to 1973. That victory over Dublin saw Louth advance to a meeting with Offaly, who were bidding for a third All-Ireland title in succession. It was close throughout, but because they were better able to take their chances, Offaly won.

Louth Footballers full of confidence ahead of Dublin challenge

I remember an umpire saying to me as the game drifted towards the last quarter, “You’re home.” I must say it looked that way, but we didn’t get there. It ended 1-8 to 0-8.

That saga is recalled in a correspondence I received from Ardee-born and Dublin-based Colm Ross. We trained in Pairc Mhuire and Colm was the ball-boy, operating behind the town-side goals. He was just 12 at the time, but still sensed Louth weren’t exactly exuding confidence going into the Offaly game.

At the last training session before that match, a presentation was made to Valerie and Patricia, the two local girls who made sure we were well fed after each training session. Colm, who, explicably, was not included in the gift-giving, asks: “Did that mean you boys didn’t expect to be back the following Tuesday?”

Colm thinks that we are now getting “a wee bit of what Louth people got in the good days.”

There was some of it at Croke Park last Sunday week. Let’s hope there’s more of it to come, beginning with closure of an all the time widening gap this Sunday. A half decade is far too long waiting to put the county’s once-chief rivals to the sword.