Inside Track: Win over Meath ends a long Louth wait

The memory comes flooding back. There’s an 11-year-old boy in the upper deck of the Cusack Stand with his parents and one of his brothers.

It’s Sunday, July 7th, 1957, and the Leinster football final is on the programme. Louth have Dublin in opposition. It’s a foul day, the rain coming down in bucketfuls. The crowd numbers 30,234.

Dan O’Neill is in his element at midfield for the Reds, catching high and providing those up front with a constant supply. That doesn’t reflect on the scoreboard, however.

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The sides are level at half-time, but soon afterwards, Dublin go 1-2 in front. It is then when O’Neill begins to see his mastery paying dividends.

Kevin Beahan is good as usual with frees, the heavy ‘leather’ posing no problem. He scores three before Jimmy McDonnell fires past Paddy Flaherty with the accuracy of William Tell.

Frank Lynch, who had come in for the injured Alfie Monk, gets on the scoresheet, and Beahan points again.

Ollie Freany goes off the Dublin side, unable to trouble Tom Conlon and his colleagues at the back. By then, Louth are in front, 2-9 to 1-7. That’s how it stays. And the young boy cheers as Dermot O’Brien goes up to receive the Delaney Cup.

There is more to come, first an All-Ireland semi-final win over Tyrone, and then victory over Cork on the day the Sam Maguire Cup was there to be won.

The 11-year-old sees it all happen from the Canal End. And he thinks: there must surely be more of this to come.

It looks good the following year, Louth making it back to the provincial final, again playing Dublin. This time the result is different. The Páirc Tailteann defeat has Louth handing back two trophies.

There’s an attempt to regain the Delaney Cup in the 1960 final. Offaly, yet to win the provincial title, are in the way. They are good enough to win.

As the young man grows older, a return of the Delaney Cup becomes more remote by each passing year. He’s involved as a player in the most barren period the county ever experienced, 1967 to 1972, when not a single match win in the knock-out is recorded.

There are flickers of hope for a few years after that, and again in the early 1990s, but nothing materialises. Then comes 2010. A place in the final for the first time in 50 years has a bitter ending.

When there’s next a Leinster final appearance, in 2023, a rampant Dublin side ensures there’s not going to be a good outcome. Same again the following year, though this time, the Dubs are severely tested.

By now the boy is a grown man, 68 years older than when he saw his first Louth Leinster win. There’s a place for him in the Press box when Louth make it a third appearance in the final.

But you can’t wear your colours when you’re up there, nor is shouting for your team the done thing. So he takes his place among supporters.

There he can shout until he gets hoarse, engage rival supporters in an argument, and cheer home his side if they’re successful.

We’re now in Croke Park on Leinster final day 2025. The new auld enemy, Meath, having taken over from Dublin, are Louth’s opponents. Almost 66,000 people turn up, the biggest crowd for a provincial final, football or hurling, in years.

And the now-OAP believes that if Louth are to win, Sam will have to be good with placed-kicks, Tommy will have to make several good catches at midfield, and Craig will have come up with a goal.

All that happens – and more. Ryan Burns claims the best of Louth’s three goals, Bevan Duffy rolls back the years, Ciarán ‘Kiki’ Keenan shows why a team needs strength in its subs, and Peter Lynch fills the No 6 jersey as comfortably as another Roche man, Jim McArdle, did 68 years ago.

Sunday’s two-point win is the sweetest Louth have had in any Leinster final. A long wait has ended, 2010 avenged, and a septuagenarian thinks back to the reception the 1957 All-Ireland team got at Dundalk’s Town Square. It was bettered last Sunday night.