Louth
Louth manager Mickey Harte with supporters after their side's victory in the Leinster GAA Football Senior Championship Semi Final match between Louth and Offaly at Croke Park in Dublin. — © SPORTSFILE
Hanging in an upstairs wardrobe at home, there are two special jerseys – half Louth half Down ones. My mother bought them for the brother and myself one Christmas.
If you pull it on, the Louth crest is on the left-hand side. When asked why she designed the rig that way, her response was candid: “That’s the side you put the county closest to your heart”.
Mummy hails from the middle of the Mournes, a rural townland called Cabra on the road between Hilltown and Kilcoo. Although, be well aware, they are ardent Clonduff folk in that part of the world. Refer to the Magpies and you’re in the confession box.
I suppose you could say our fella and I had a privileged upbringing in that we had twice the shares in the inter-county game. If Louth were knocked out, some years Down could be relied upon for weekend entertainment, or vice versa.
But nothing was ever like 2010. In the one year, we had four finals to enjoy. Louth qualified for the O’Byrne Cup and Leinster deciders, while Down’s odyssey involved Croke Park appearances in April, for the Division 2 showpiece, and the third Sunday of September.
The club – Roche Emmets – meanwhile, became RTÉ royalty, taking part in the Celebrity Bainisteoir series and getting national exposure which, despite going disastrously on the field, was a novelty at the time.
Losing was the outcome on every occasion but it remains such a fondly remembered time in my life. There is a digital photo frame that flickers images from over the years in the hallway and some of them are of Dáire, the wee brother who is now about five inches taller, with a white, long sleeve top on beneath a Louth or Down jersey from the time.
In Louth colours, he was Paddy Keenan. Supporting Down, Martin Clarke was who he mimicked. From the height of the summer, when the Reds took out Kildare in Navan, to the downpour of autumn, and Sam Maguire was on offer, he remained stubbornly committed to the same attire.
Both Keenan and Clarke wore a white underarmour throughout that championship campaign. Isn’t it just amazing the little things that inspire young lads?
Gerard Browne, a member of the Louth squad for Sunday’s Leinster final, decided to develop a mullet last year and sure didn’t it catch on among the underage cast in Roche as a result. They’re all toddling around with plenty on top now. Good job some of them aren’t old enough yet to consider the family hairlines…
He is an idol to them and heroes aren’t forgotten. For example, I’d still be in awe of Keenan and, from that Down side, Mark Poland. The Longstone-native is now training Cooley Kickhams and I couldn’t really be letting on that he’s still a mental poster boy now – could I? – but he is.
I saw a post on Twitter recently that involved selecting an all-time Kerry forward line. All potential options had a price and you had a certain budget to stay within, so it wasn’t just as straightforward as plotting Spillane, Bomber and Maurice Fitz with Clifford, Cooper and somebody else.
It was amazing to read just how many respondents left out Colm Cooper. As Roy Keane would say, ‘really?’
He is one of the best ever and I, for one, will never be told otherwise. Indeed, beside the aforementioned dual jersey, there is an old Kerry strip signed by the Gooch himself. It will find its way into a frame some day.
You see, you are never too old to have heroes. They are the people who inspired you to get involved in something or to be something or to pursue something. And for a whole generation of Wee people, Niall Sharkey, Tommy Durnin, James Califf and co are doing just that.
Before starting out as a hack, I served as a waiter in the Ramada Hotel, formerly the Park Inn, on the Armagh Road out of Dundalk. In February of 2016, Leicester City defeated Manchester City at the Etihad Stadium to move six points clear at the top of the Premier League. They would win the title outright in the end for the most fairytale of victories.
I can remember tending to a couple with their young son, who was wearing a Leicester jersey with Riyah Mahrez’s name and number on the back, in the lounge. Now, from chatting to the parents, they knew as much about football as I do in relation to brain surgery. Clearly, the young lad was just swept away in the tide of inspiration.
He may be a Leicester fan for life now. The same way as there are pockets of Leeds United, Aston Villa, Nottingham Forest and Ipswich Town supporters around the country whose childhood will almost certainly correlate with the respective clubs’ golden eras.
Now it wasn’t as though Dáire and I were ever going to be anything but GAA fanatics as our parents, and their families, were too deeply involved to be otherwise. Yet it wasn’t until that 2010 rollercoaster, and the swell of anticipation and emotion that it stirred, where the pair of us actually knew what it felt like to have a stake on the major stages.
For years previously, it was about watching All-Ireland finals or attending big games involving other counties, the elite far removed from us in the peasant or working class. Winning a match at Croke Park? Sure that’s only for other people to enjoy.
And it wasn’t even just us, in reality. My father, who has followed Louth since the 1970s, had never watched the Reds in a senior provincial final until 2010.
He was there with my mother in 1991 and 1994 for Down’s All-Ireland victories over Meath and Dublin respectively, but it wasn’t his own county. The 2010 saga was different.
The feeling will be different 13 years on, when Mickey Harte’s men run on to the Croker turf on Sunday afternoon. It will be novel, but less so than before. But that’s only for us grizzled veterans of disappointment, those who have travelled the country year-on-year, watching Leitrim put up 25 points in the qualifiers and annihilations by Tyrone, Sligo, Tipperary and Cork.
But for wet-behind-the-ears supporters, the bus loads of kids who will descend upon Jones’ Road, possibly for the first time, for the young lassie who walked up to Califf as I interviewed him in Ardee after the Cork match, asking, innocently, ‘are you the goalie?’, this is a new experience and one that will not be readily forgotten.
I can remember talking to the Roche U21 team I was over before last December’s championship final meeting with Naomh Máirtín in Darver and one of the last things I said to them was along the lines of…
“You’ve done the inspiring. For the community, the last week has been building up to this and afterwards, they will go back to their lives and may have forgotten about it all by Tuesday or Wednesday. This is the end of their journey, but tonight is about you, as a group, and finishing something special. Something that, no matter where life takes you, you can look back on when you meet each other and just smile. Now it’s about you…”
As lame as that may sound, it seems relevant to Louth now. The players cannot detract inspiration by failing to win, they will remain heroes to the throngs regardless. A medal would be a tangible portent of the legacy they have left, though, and serve as a fitting reward for the service they have given to Louth GAA.
Go and get it, fellas.