Louth move three clear at top of the table
Louth 2-10 Antrim 0-14
IT wasn’t their prettiest or most convincing success of 2017, but Louth’s fourth win on the bounce - their eighth of the season - leaves Colin Kelly’s men in pole position to clinch promotion from Division 3 this spring.
A battling win over Antrim in dreadful underfoot conditions edged the Reds three points clear of their nearest rivals - Armagh and Sligo - albeit with Tipperary sitting a further point back and sporting a game in hand.
One more win would normally be enough to clinch promotion, but Louth still have to face all three of their fellow promotion contenders, which muddies the complicated permutations and combinations even further.
Even if they beat Armagh on Sunday week, Tipp and Sligo could nick the two promotion spots by winning all of their remaining games and with only Armagh and Tipperary still to play each other from the chasing trio, Louth may need two more wins to make promotion 100 per cent certain.
That said, Sligo, Tipp and Armagh all still have to play Louth, and they also have to beat teams that are scrapping for their lives at the bottom of the table, so it’s unlikely that even two of the three will win their remaining matches.
Louth, of course, can only control their own destiny and Sunday’s gutsy win ensured they racked up four league victories on the trot for the first time since 2006, when Eamon McEneaney oversaw a six-game winning streak en route to the Division 2 title.
Whether they can emulate that success remains to be seen, but for a team that were odds on for relegation at the start of the year, four wins from four is no mean feat.
Like the two that came before against Longford and Offaly, Sun- day’s win was ground out in testing conditions, but in the end it was a good deal more comfortable than the scoreline suggests.
Antrim arrived in Drogheda on the back of their first win over an unbeaten Sligo side, so confidence and morale would have been high in the Saffron camp.
The heavy conditions would probably have suited Gearoid Adams’ big, physical side more than their hosts, so it was never going to be anything other than a hard day at the office for Louth. And so it proved. A bright start was marred by a few bad early wides, and a very legitimate penalty claim was waved away by Paul Faloon, but the plan seemed to be coming together when Tommy Durnin lofted over the opening score and two minutes later Eoin O’Connor netted his side’s first goal. Ryan Burns and Paraic Smith combined on the left to leave the big full forward with the simplest of tap-ins on 12 minutes.
Antrim were offering very little in attack at that stage, but moments later a wayward kick-out from Craig Lynch gifted Ryan Murray possession and he managed to find the top corner with the help of a wicked deflection off Paddy Reilly, making it 1-1 to 1-0.
Both sides struggled to carve out openings in the heavy conditions, but CJ McGourty levelled the scores with a 23rd minute free.
Louth rallied again before the break and points from Bevan Duffy and Paraic Smith made it 1-3 to 1-1 at the interval.
Faloon evened up his earlier penalty call by denying Antrim a spot kick from a similar situation, but by and large the visitors found frees - and scoreable ones at that - much easier to come by than their hosts.
Gearoid Adams felt Antrim missed too many chances in that opening half, but the stats didn’t back up the political spin as Louth six wides to Antrim’s four and dropped two chances short.
Antrim were much better after the break, but Louth kept coming up with the answers.
The northerners closed the gap to the minimum four times early in the second-half but Louth replied immediately at the other end each time, with Eoin O’Connor, Ryan Burns, Ruairi Moore and Burns again from a free, all on target.
The Hunterstown man was an important outlet in the second period and he showed his class by plucking a Lima Dullaghan delivery fro the sky and drawing a foul from Paddy McAleer.
This time Faloon had no option but to award a penalty and Burns dusted himself down to send Chris Kerr the wrong way.
Now sporting a five-point cushion, the second-half pattern resumed after that with O’Connor and John Bingham cancelling out scores from CJ McGourty and Conor Murray.
With just over three minutes of normal-time remaining McGourty closed the gap to a goal with converting a free and quickly adding his first point from play, but a good move involving Anthony Williams, Ruairi Moore and Adrian Reid teed up Burns to put four between the sides again.
The three minutes of injury-time alotted had to be doubled for a lengthy stoppage so six extra minutes had been played when Ruairi Scott pointed to leave a goal in it again.
Antrim peppered the Louth goal with a few up-and-unders in a frantic finale, but a punched point from Jack Dowling was all they could muster.
Louth hung on and retire for a two-week ‘break’ sitting pretty at the top of the table.
Kelly and his players know the real acid tests lie ahead, but with confidence sky high they’ll be relishing Sunday week’s derby date with Armagh and the chance to exorcise the demons of July 2015 in Thurles seven days later.
LOUTH: Craig Lynch; Padraig Rath, Patrick Reilly, John Bingham 0-1; Derek Maguire, Liam Dullaghan, Anthony Williams; Tommy Durnin 0-1, Declan Byrne 0-1; James Stewart, Paraic Smith 0-1, Bevan Duffy 0-1; Ruairi Moore 0-1, Eoin O’Connor 1-2, Ryan Burns 1-2 (1-0 pen, 1f, 1’45). Subs: Adrian Reid for P Smith (66), J ames Califf for D Byrne (70+).
ANTRIM: Chris Kerr; Conor Hamill, Patrick Gallagher, Paddy McAleer; Paddy McBride 0-1, Declan Lynch, Peter Healy; Jack Dowling 0-1, Stephen Beatty; Conor Murray 0-1, Ryan Murray 1-0, Kevin Niblock 0-2; CJ McGourty 0-5 (4f), Conor Small, Mathew Fitzpatrick. Subs: Pat Branagan for C Hamill (6), Sean Donnelly for C Hamill (16), Donal Nugent for C Small (51), Jack Hannigan for P Healy (64), Ruairi Scott (0-1) for M Fitzpatrick (66), Oisin Hamill for P McAleer (70+).
REFEREE: P Faloon (Down).