Inside Track: Devlin’s men can keep the dream alive
Inside Track with Joe Carroll
In one way it’s been a long journey, and in another, only a sprint. Louth play Mayo in Sunday’s All-Ireland semi-final, the first time the county will have representation on a day like this in almost seven decades.
That’s a long wait for a repeat. In between, there have been some good days, but mostly ones to forget.
Commonplace on championship days were long trudges with long faces down the Clonliffe Road and up Navan’s Flower Hill after defeats, the good days of the 1940s into the 1950s sinking more and more into the background.
The winter months were better, but only a little. League promotion visited on a number of occasions, only once to the top level. The same was again achieved, but then denied, due to the competition being restructured.
There were competition wins in a couple of subsidiary competitions, neither of which is still on the schedule. The All-Ireland ‘B’ came this way back around the turn into the 2000s, and after that, a Tommy Murphy Cup win was met with muted celebrations.
There would have been something bigger had fair play prevailed on the day of the 2010 Leinster final.
All of that came pre-2021. Since then, there have been two league promotions and three provincial final appearances, one of them bringing the Delaney Cup this way for the first time since Patsy Coleman was presented with it back in the 1950s.
Now the county is agog, sights set on Croke Park. The change in fortunes has been seismic.
While the seniors have led the charge, underage teams gave supporters more days out than ever before. The under-20s reached three successive Leinster finals, winning one before going on to contest the All-Ireland final. The minors played in a provincial final and All-Ireland quarter-final.
It’s important to give recognition to the underage teams. Included on the 2024 under-21 side, coached by Fergal Reel, were Dara McDonnell, Tadhg McDonnell, Seán Callaghan, James Maguire, Kieran McArdle, Comac McKeown and Seán Reynolds. All seven have played a part in making next Sunday possible.
The starting point for the seniors was low. First league matches were in Division Four. There were enough wins to gain promotion, with another rise in grade the following year.
Division Two status has been defended since this year’s campaign, yielding an impressive 10 points, which in other years would have earned promotion to the top tier.
And what kick-started the sprint? The then-County Board chairman, Peter Fitzpatrick, somehow inveigled Mickey Harte to come in as county team manager after the multiple All-Ireland winner had astonishingly been turned away by Tyrone.
Harte brought Gavin Devlin with him as coach. It was an established winning partnership. Harte is now with Offaly, Devlin bringing all his expertise to the Darver training ground and to the sideline on match day.
He has an experienced team behind him, just as Ger Brennan – another Fitzpatrick appointee – had after taking over from Harte and Devlin on their sudden departure to Derry.
Brennan, now in charge of another of this weekend’s semi-finals, his native Dublin, was in place for Louth’s 2025 provincial championship win.
Throw all those names together, Harte, Devlin, Brennan, Reel, last year’s minor manager, Jonny Clerkin – also their back-up teams – and you have the leaders of the recent-year revolution.
The question now is: Can this year’s story have another chapter to follow Sunday’s? There’s no reason to believe it can’t.
A brilliant league campaign – without which Devlin’s team might not have qualified for the All-Ireland series, following the Leinster semi-final defeat by Dublin – was the perfect start to the season.
But good as the wins over the likes of Tyrone, Cavan and Derry were, there’s been nothing to compare with what we’ve seen over the past few weeks.
The Dublin league defeat was avenged, Armagh were stopped from galloping away before being nailed at the post, and although everything was pointed against them, Louth touched brilliance in the quarter-final with Monaghan.
In each of those games, there was a deficit to be made up. It was done with grit and determination, no little skill, and, above all, a refusal to believe the underdog can’t win.
Now comes another huge task, a game with a county that knows Croker as well as it does Castlebar’s McHale Park, playing there on occasions even bigger than next Sunday’s.
It’s a changed Mayo side from the beaten All-Ireland finalists of recent times. The emphasis is on youth – two of the full-forward line, Darragh Beirne and Kobe McDonell, have yet to celebrate their 20th birthdays.
This duo play alongside Ryan O’Donaghue, and between them, the three contributed 19 points to their side’s 0-23 in the quarter-final defeat of Cork. Quite obviously, they pose a threat.
But in getting this far, the Louth defence hasn’t been overridden by other name players, Con O’Callaghan, Eoin Conaty, Jack McCarron, Niall Scully and Ciarán Costelloe among them.
Midfield is not the troubled area is was for a time during the league and in the Leinster championship joust with Dublin. And, simply put, those up front know where the posts are.
It’s for certain the 15 who start on Sunday won’t be still standing at the final whistle. It’s now a 20-man game, and Gavin Devlin knows that when he looks to the bench, he’ll see ready-made replacements to choose from. This has been the essence of the team’s success.
“We’re in dreamland,” said a Louth reveller after the Armagh tie in Inniskeen. There was a follow-up win after that – there can be yet another this Sunday. One thing is for certain: Louth won’t lack for a support at a sold-out Croker.