Oul’ enemy a huge step up for Louth

WHEN the possibility of a Championship showdown with Meath appeared on Louth’s horizon last winter it must have felt a long way off for Colin Kelly and his troops.

2015 had been a washout of biblical proportions as the Reds slipped quietly into the basement grade in the national league and suffered one of their heaviest ever championship defeats at the hands of Tipperary.

All the right noises emerged about drawing a line in the sand and knuckling down over the close season, but a derby date in the summer sunshine was well down the to-do list.

But as the big day looms on Sunday at Parnell Park (3.30) the Reds could scarcely be in a better place. They untangled themselves from Division 4 at the first attempt, hurdled a tricky Championship opener against Carlow and checked in at HQ for a bit of silverware along the way.

But the step up required to topple the Royals on Sunday won’t be lost on Kelly or his players and full back Paddy Reilly knows Louth will have to pull off a major upset to progress to a semi-final date with Dublin.

‘They’re a Division 2 team and we’re a Division 4 team, so they have the upper hand in that sense. Meath are a big team with a proud history. We achieved a wee bit of success winning Division 4, and that was one objective, so hopefully now we can notch up another championship win. Louth and Meath games are big ones so hopefully we can rise to the occasion and pull out a victory.’

Reilly has tasted minor championship success over Meath, but the Royals exacted revenge just a few weeks later and he realises that senior wins over the oul’ enemy are rarer still.

‘I played against them in 2011 in the minor and we beat them in the first round, but they beat us in the semi-final. I suppose I’d have faced a few of them at minor and U-21 but this is a different story and the reality is that no Louth team has beaten Meath in the Championship since 1975. There’s no history of us winning against Meath, but hopefully we can buck the trend.’

Like many other top Louth footballers, Paddy’s Dad David went through his entire career without experiencing a championship victory over the sworn enemy.

‘He has a couple of stories about them, but no good ones,’ Reilly quips.

While the current Meath team is far from vintage, Reilly believes all of the pressure is on them.

‘They’re the Division 2 team and they’ll be massive favourites so we have to cause an upset.’

Even on paper Meath are a much more daunting proposition than anything Louth have encountered this year.

‘You have Reilly and Wallace and then there’s Mickey Newman and Tormey, so they have big, big players. Any fifteen Meath put out are going to be quality, so it’s a case of trying to stop them and then perform to our maximum.

‘For us it’s about taking it to the next level and a win would be a huge boost for us and a huge boost for the whole county I think.

‘When we first got together this year Colin set our goal to get out of the National League. We achieved that but we weren’t looking at Carlow until we won promotion and we didn’t look at Meath until we got over Carlow.

‘But the Championship is a totally different pace, even the weather makes it harder to catch your breath and the ball travels harder on the faster ground. The whole build-up is different too, but that’s why you do the hard yards throughout the winter, to be ready for this.’

In the pubs and on the terraces 2010 is bound to be re-visited on Sunday afternoon, but with such a young squad on duty, Louth shouldn’t be harbouring too many hang-ups.

There’s only a few lads who played in the 2010 Leinster final. It’s a totally new team. It’s a totally new team from even two years ago never mind six years ago.

‘It is a Louth/Meath game, it’s a derby, but we have a completely new team and hopefully the lads can stand up and be counted and get the right result. We wouldn’t train as hard as we do if we didn’t think it was possible, and if we perform to the level we’re capable of we can beat them.’