Sam Mulroy adamant Louth are making progress despite latest defeat

Despite putting in another courageous performance in Navan, it was not to be for the Louth Footballers, as their ambitions of making the knock out stages of the All Ireland Championship took a serious dent following the defeat to Cork.

What will hurt more is they fought back so bravely. Front and centre to their comeback was captain Sam Mulroy, who put in another huge performance to help reignite the Wee County challenge.

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Reflecting on the loss, the potent attacker felt it was the fact they always seemed to be trailing, no matter how much they threw at the Rebels, that ultimately proved costly. A fatal early error leaving them with a mountain to climb.

“Conceding that goal in the first half probably killed us” he admitted. “We were constantly chasing the match from there and we just couldn’t close the gap in the end. We got a point ahead, but they seemed to go right back in front after that.

“It left us wondering what it would take to beat them. They played well and made it tough out there, but this is seriously disappointing, as it was the game we looked at and hoped to take a result from to help us get out of the group.

“Right to the end we thought we could pull it out of the bag. Even that last chance we had, you are thinking something might happen for us. I don’t think we ever stopped trying and it is not a case that we didn’t have enough chances, but that just adds to the disappointment."

Louth never underestimated the challenge Cork would pose, despite their early exit from the Munster Championship at the hands of Clare and the fact the Wee County got one over them in Ardee earlier this year.

Mulroy knew they would have a stronger side in Navan and be hungrier for this encounter. Despite the defeat, he thinks people should look at how far they have came in recent seasons before being overly critical of their loss in Navan. He feels this group can only improve and is looking forward to further big games with Mayo and Kerry in the week's ahead. 

“They had all their big guns out today and are very a good side” he exclaimed.

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“They were coming up the road trying to get one back on us. But you cannot forget that three years ago they beat us by 20 odd points.

“I know it is disappointing today and it will sting for a while, but when you look at the bigger picture of where Louth have come from in the last while, if you take step back, you’ll see we are just finding our feet at this level.

“Hopefully we will have two more games like that, where we can learn an awful lot from it. That will put us in a good position for the for next few seasons.”