Winning the Leinster championship is one of Louth’s priorities

While the Louth senior footballers will be hoping to improve on last year’s performance, Dundalk FC’s aim for 2025 is more modest – to go from worst to first, the Oriel outfit competing in the League of Ireland’s lowest echelon for the first time in almost two decades.

That’s not sitting well with followers, but it could be worse. At a time late last year, no League of Ireland being played on the Carrick Road was a real possibility.

Louth wear red and sometimes white – hopefully, the predominately black jerseys have been hung out to dry, for good. Dundalk’s black-and-white kit was the only one for years, but in recent times there have been others of a different colour.

That’s by the by. More important to say is that two teams are this part of the county’s best supported. There are many who follow the fortunes of both – those who don’t have nothing to gain from seeing the other outfit flounder.

Louth were described by one pundit as the team of the championship. He mainly based his opinion on the teams the Reds had beaten to make it to the All-Ireland quarter-finals for the first time.

His comments wouldn’t have found favour on the other side of one of the borders surrounding this county. Understandably so – you can’t do much better than take home the Sam Maguire.

Still, there was a lot of merit in the Ger Brennan-managed team’s performance, not only in the championship. Division Two league status was retained, though not as convincingly as the previous year.

Whereas in 2023 Louth had the chance to win promotion going into the final game with Dublin, relegation was a possibility, however remote, before the round seven tie with Kildare in Carlow last April.

But in making comparisons, it must be said that Louth’s 2024 Leinster Championship performance was much better than the one of 12 months earlier. Both yielded a place in the final with Dublin.

The scoreboard from the first weighed heavily in the Dubs’ favour – next time just four points divided the sides.

That, plus what followed in the All-Ireland qualifiers, victories over Cork and Meath coming before defeat by Donegal when there were just eight teams with the chance of winning the title, has raised expectations.

The stated aim among county players Inside Track has been chatting with is to not only get back to the provincial final for the third time in-a-row, but win it.

For more than a decade the competition has been the preserve of Dublin. Brian Fenton and James McCarthy were the team’s backbone, most of the time forming a midfield partnership that others found difficult to even equal. Both have quit the inter-county scene, and that has put a bit of a step in the pep of others.

No-one, however, should think Dessie Farrell will have far to look for replacements. And whoever he gets to fill the 8 and 9 jerseys, rookies or not, will have plenty of experience around them.

The league will come first, and won’t lack for intrigue. It’s to be played under the new rules, and just how games pan out early on is anyone’s guess.

Some of them: two points for a score kicked from beyond the new arc; the ball moved forward 50 yards for verbal abuse of the referee; a forward making a catch close to the goal from a kick from beyond the 40-metre line getting two chances for a score; teams committed to having at least three players in either half.

Always a central figure, referees will now be in the limelight more than ever before as they try to get the rules’ interpretation right.

Louth are giving themselves every chance to bed ready. Several challenges, among them, two against Dublin teams, and another against Tyrone, have taken place and are said to have gone well. The real test, however, will come when there’s something at stake.

A player who took part said the rules speed up the game, but added that the referee admitted afterwards that keeping track of everything was “difficult”.

If a Louth panel has been settled upon, it has yet to be made known, at least to this quarter. It’s expected to include most of those in action last year, with county champions, St Mary’s, having the biggest representation, Tadhg McDonnell included.

The Nominated Four, as Craig Lennon, Sam Mulroy, Tommy Durnin and Donal McKenny have become known – well, at least here – should again backbone the team.

They’ll have newcomers around them, McDonnell, as mentioned, and perhaps some of the under-20 team that made it to last year’s Leinster final.

It all begins at the tail-end of this month, the seniors travelling to meet Westmeath in the opening round of the league.