Conor Grimes loving life under Mickey Harte as promotion is secured

Has there ever been a better time in recent years to be a member of the Louth attack? 2-7, 0-12, 2-13 and now 1-17 have been hit from open play as The Wee County has looked more and more menacing every week under the tutelage of their new management.

Conor Grimes has been superb since returning to the team in the win against Leitrim and he has been blown away by what Mickey Harte has brought to the table, a style of play which he was delighted to buy into.

“The structure of the attacks that we have in place at the moment, they are second to none” noted the wily veteran. “I don’t remember putting up a score like that against opposition of the calibre of Carlow, they are a strong side, very defensive yet we broke them down well today.”

“It just gives you confidence, we’ve got so many layers to our armour, so many players pushing for places and I suppose that has left us all in a really good place, we’ve had some pressure games right from the Leitrim game the whole way through.”

“Leitrim was a big, must win game. Sligo a must win, Carlow today a must win and the group are dealing with that really well, the group is just in a great place.”

You don’t get these big tallies without having a good relationship with the players around you and the Glen Emmets clubman has looked particularly in song with Sam Mulroy.

Harte has tweaked their positioning this year, the Louth captain playing a much deeper role than he has in the past with Grimes deployed around the square at full forward, a position he looked dangerous from as was seen today with his final tally 1-2.

“He is very easy to play with, he does whatever needs to be done for the team, inside forward would’ve probably been his preferred role last year but this year at 11 he’s flying it.”

“He’s running the show so you just know when he gets on the ball, he’s going to have his head up first time and there will be runners coming off the shoulder.”

“We had that engine, the likes of Ciaran Byrne coming off the shoulder all the time, that is where the fitness we have comes into it. The group knows each other, we know our style of play and we’ve just been working really hard on it.”

The last thing anyone wanted was another year in the basement league, something which would’ve derailed their development and that meant there was mounting pressure on the Boys in Red to turn on the style.

Grimes felt it was paramount that they got back into Division Three at the first time of asking, clarifying they needed that lift to give young players in the panel along with those rising through the ranks something meaningful to look up to as they dream of someday putting on the Louth jersey.

“It is absolutely huge to secure promotion, we needed to be playing at a higher grade of football next year. There is so much work gone in, the long nights training on your own the whole way through the pandemic.”

“We’ve got a great balance at the moment of youth and experience, but we want the younger lads coming through to be looking at Louth playing at a higher grade of football every year. For next year we have Division Three to look forward to but for now we’ll concentrate on Offaly in two weeks.”