Mickey Harte admits “soul destroying” Kerry defeat was hard to take

Mickey Harte didn’t mince his words after his side's heavy defeat to the traditional powerhouse of Kerry.

“If we want to continue to make progress we are going to have to work very hard to get up to the next level,” he explained.
Harte feels the second punishing loss of the year is yet another reality check for his men.

“It certainly lets the players know without any shadow of a doubt what is required to play at this level. Because sometimes they can look on at a team, watch video footage of them, maybe not playing to their best, but when you get a team like Kerry, a team like Dublin, who are on song, this is what you have to deal with.

“That requires a serious level of conditioning. It requires a serious level of strength and it requires a serious level of footballing quality. The players wouldn’t fully understand that if they didn’t go toe to toe with these men. Now they have done that, it’s going to give them lots of food for thought.”

From the sideline, the reality of seeing his team get outclassed was hard for Harte to take.

“It’s soul destroying really,” he began. “And the sad thing about it is that we started the game very well and we created some good chances and didn’t take them.

“We needed all of those chances to go over, or go into the net. One of them could have gone into the net and if that had gone in it would have given us that wee bit of a degree of belief, because Kerry were always going to pick off scores here.”

Kerry manager Jack O'Connor never took Louth for granted

Joe Carroll's Curiosity Corner: What was the last newly built County GAA Ground?

That misfiring and Kerry’s punishing nature surprised the Tyrone native. For the Louth manger, Kerry are a lot better than what they showed coming into the 28 point drubbing.

“I said to Jack at the end, I don’t know at this stage how Mayo beat them. Because we played Mayo the week before and maybe Mayo say they underperformed against us, or were complacent or whatever, but the difference in the game against Mayo and Kerry was just night and day.

“Kerry are All-Ireland champions after all and they have a tradition second to none. We were up against a really slick team. I have watched Kerry in the League and I have watched them in the Championship to date and they didn’t have a vintage performance like that anywhere.

“You might say that’s because they were playing an opposition, but no I don’t think it’s to do with the opposition, I think it’s the quality of their play, which was of a very high standard.”

Despite the disappointing end to the progressive season, Harte feels he will have no problem convincing players - new and existing - to join the “work in progress.”

“Well, it’s not that hard to convince them because we started in Division 4 two years ago and that’s where we were. That’s the standard of football Louth were playing in.

“We got to Division 3 and I think did very well to win Division 3, so it’s a work in progress.

“And the higher you go, the harder the work is and the longer it might take, so you can’t expect a team who are playing at the level Louth have been playing the last number of years to go in and say we’ll go from 4 to 3, and 3 to 2 and 2 to 1, just in a sequence like that.

“You have to learn as you go and obviously the higher you go up the ladder the more learnings involved and the more you need to work at those high level of skills that you need, the high level of fitness that you need, the high level of conditioning that you need.

“So I think the players will learn from that. I just see it as a natural progression that means that if you wanna get to the top you are not going to be jumping there very fast.”