Four Louth players in the mix for an All-Star

Louth senior footballers’ fine season has gained further recognition with four of the panel winning nominations for this year’s All-Stars. Donal McKenny, Sam Mulroy, Craig Lennon and Tommy Durnin are listed among the 45 nominees, putting themselves in line for a place on the elusive 15.

Hopes are high that when the team is announced later in the year Louth’s name is up in lights. It’s a great honour for the quartet, with the rest of the panel and the management having made a contribution.

Nothing but a terrific all-round effort kept Ger Brennan’s side in Division Two of the league. What followed was the best championship campaign the county has had since 2010.

Armagh, as expected, have most nominees, 11 of the All-Ireland-winning team listed. Beaten finalists, Galway, have eight and Donegal seven. Louth equals Dublin and Kerry’s tally, and after that, there are two for Tyrone, Mayo and Roscommon. Cork has one.

There’s nothing for Derry, who won the league under Mickey Harte’s stewardship, but followed with an indifferent championship, which sealed Mickey Harte’s fate.

As it was 14 years ago, Louth got to the Leinster final. But it didn’t end at that. There were two very special wins in the All-Ireland qualifiers, over Meath and Cork, and then a solid performance in defeat by Donegal in a first ever quarter-final appearance.

Tommy Durnin was a match for any of the midfielders he encountered. He wasn’t over-awed by having Brian Fenton to contend with in the Leinster final, and any time he surged forward, there was always a good chance he’d score.

He could defend, too. That catch he made in the dying minutes of the league tie with Cork at Ardee was done in the style of a yesterday full-back.

In today’s game, wearing the No. 2 jersey doesn’t mean you hang around the goals, just keeping an eye on the corner-forward; up in attack is not foreign territory any more for any defender.

Donal McKenny found himself up front on many occasions, and he made it pay, his early goal against Kerry letting the Munster champions know that the qualifier in Portlaoise wouldn’t be as easily won as the teams’ meeting twelve months earlier.

Sam Mulroy can claim to be the country’s best free-taker. Some – no, make that most – of his dead-ball strikes this year were special, straight from the Kevin Beahan collection.

If Sam and the others don’t know who KB was, let me say the Ardee man was lethal from in and around the 50 yard mark – the ones closer to goal were taken by his club and county colleague, Jim Roe.

He kicked a ball made of leather, weighing much more than today’s. It was heaviest of all on a wet day, and was sometimes called a ‘pug’. To be compared with Beahan is a badge Mulroy should wear with honour.

And again we’re back to today’s game. Craig Lennon wore the No. 7 shirt and defended well. However, the very best of the St Mochta’s clubman was seen when he was lurking around the opposite side’s goals.

A championship 4-7 was a tremendous return, winning him a joint-fourth place in the country’s Top 10 scorers from play. What the lads will be trying to do is emulate Paddy Keenan, the county’s first – and so far, only – winner in the present All-Star scheme, in 2010.

The St Patrick’s clubman’s career was at its height at the time, and the All-Star was a fitting reward; but as he said later, a Leinster Championship win, so cruelly denied him and his colleagues that year, would have had greater value.

This scheme was inaugurated in 1971. Prior to that, during the 1960s, Gael Linn staged something similar. The only Louth man honoured was Frank Lynch.