Inside Track: Teams going for the biggest possible tallies
Inside Track with Joe Carroll
Louth championship campaigns in three grades have just taken off, and a feature of the games played so far has been the exceptional tallies that some have yielded.
St Mary’s, favourites to win the senior, claimed 4-13 in their defeat of St Mochta’s in a fast, furious and thoroughly enjoyable tie at Darver.
And as if to show their failure to retain a place in the senior league is not going to define their season, Newtown Blues came in with 3-17 in seeing off Dreadnots.
Blues, last year’s runners-up, are now being coached by Jonny Clerkin, who had charge of the county under-17 team that reached the 2025 Leinster final.
One of the former Cooley players’ assistants on the evening of the narrow defeat by Offaly, Seán McCann, is filling the same role with Dundalk Gaels.
In junior, John Mitchel’s clocked 5-22, but even that was put in the shade by O’Connell’s score in the same grade, a whopping 11-21. If there’s been a bigger tally in championship football, it doesn’t come quickly to mind.
All of this could be interpreted as the winners ‘rubbing it in’. Okay, so one or two of them – and there were others not recorded here – could have eased off with their opponents beaten into pulp in some cases.
The prime reason for keeping the scoreboard travelling at a furious pace, however, is that with the championships now being run as they are – league sections first and then the knock-outs – score difference can count when it comes to deciding on the teams to contest the quarter-finals, and that’s important.
Just ask St Mochta’s. Strongly fancied in last year’s senior, the Villagers won one and lost one in their three-team group, with nick or nothing diving them in both, and the group’s other match also a close-run thing.
When the final tot was done, Moch’s missed out on a place in the quarter-finals by the slenderest possible margin. Scoring an extra point, or, keeping one out, could have saved them.
Second round matches in senior were played over the last few days, and there was also activity in the two other grades, most intermediate teams having their first run-out.
It will happen in senior before this weekend’s third and final series is played, pencils coming out to see what teams, other than those unbeaten, have to win by, or, not be beaten by.
The top two in each of the four groups go through to the quarter-finals, while the four bottom teams face a knock-out series, the losers dropping to next season’s intermediate championship.