A goal could be worth four points in Louth’s bid to reach another Leinster final

What are the odds on next season’s Leinster senior championship final being a re-run of the last two? And another question: How are games to be decided in 2025 – under new or existing rules?

Dublin had a joyride in their defeat of Louth last year, but it was much different a few months ago in the repeat meeting. Until Louth gift-wrapped the Dubs a goal midway through the first half, those who had backed the favourites at long odds-on must have had furrowed brows, wondering if they’d be able to put a loaf on the table the following day.

That score put the title-holders seven points clear, but Louth weren’t done with it. Craig Lennon, one of the championships leading goalsmiths, put the finishing touch to a fine move, leaving Stephen Cluxton with the unfamiliar task of having to retrieve the ball from the back of the net for a second time.

It ended with four points between the sides, and if the Sky-blues didn’t give a collective ‘phew’ as they went up to collect the Delaney Cup, they should have. It was the closest any team had got to them in the 11 consecutive finals Leinster finals they’d been involved in before this one.

Here’s one who believes that had Louth avoided conceding that goal it would have been a fight to the finish, and when that the case it can be anyone’s game.

Let’s look forward and deal with the question posed above. Regardless of how they fare in the league, Dublin will again be warm favourites, especially to emerge from the top half of the draw, which reads: First round, Carlow v Meath, Wicklow v Longford. Quarter-finals, Offaly v Carlow/Meath, Dublin v Wicklow/Longford.

Meath have a new manager in Robbie Brennan, who, in his stint at club level, led Kilmacud Crokes to an All-Ireland championship – while Offaly will be hoping Mickey Harte can work the oracle with them.

No word yet on who’ll be leading Dublin; but whoever it is – Dessie Farrell could be again on the line – he’ll be expected to make it yet another appearance in the final.

And now to the bottom half, which Louth hope to dominate, taking on either Wexford or Laois in the quarter-finals, and if successful there playing either Kildare or Westmeath in the last four.

There’s been a feelgood factor in the county ever since rookie county manager, Ger Brennan, kept his charges in Division Two of the league, and after that, set off on a history-making championship odyssey, which had that Leinster final included, and didn’t end until Donegal proved too strong in the All-Ireland quarter-finals, a stage at which no Louth team had been before.

The league comes first, starting at the end of January. It will give us an idea of what to expect in the championship, and, more important, how the team is coping with the new rules, which are almost certain to come into effect.

A committee headed by former Dublin manager, Jim Gavin, has come up with a set of proposals, designed, no doubt, to change the way the game is being played. And goodness knows it needs changing.

Most matches in recent times have become a hard watch, resulting in fewer filling the stands and terraces. If ever the game needed an injection it is now. Hopefully, Gavin and his colleagues’ work provides it.

The new rules were employed in games played in the revived Railway Cup over the weekend, and there’s been a good reaction. Getting to perfect them is something Ger Brennan and other managers will be working on between now and the end of the league.