Stewart feels Reds will rise to challenge of Division 2

JAMES Stewart is among the new breed of Louth player who will be sailing in uncharted territory next season in Division 2, but Sunday’s man-of-the-match feels the Reds will take it all in their stride.

‘It will be new stepping stone for a lot of this team, but even Division 3 was a new stepping stone for most of the lads this year,’ he said.

‘It is a very young team and a very new team, but we grab every challenge that we can and we’re taking it each challenge in our stride.

‘We have the league final now to look forward to, which is another competitive game and good preparation for the championship. Going up to Division 2 next year, it’ll be a better standard, we’ll be playing quality teams, so we are only going to get better as well.’

Few would have given Louth a chance of beating Tipp following the heavy defeat to Armagh seven days previously, but the Dundalk Gaels man insisted they’re getting used to surprising people.

‘No one gave us a chance from the start of the season I don’t think - I think we were favourites to go down. But each game we kept showing how good we are and each game we got stronger. Last week was the exception obviously, there is always a blip on the road. We got back on track today and we showed what we can really do.

‘Even leading into the game we had Ryan Burns out with a tummy bug and other boys pulling out with injuries so we didn’t really even have our strongest 15 out.

‘But it just shows the depth of the squad, when one man goes out the quality keeps coming back in and I think that is the one big difference between Louth this year and maybe other years. We just have depth in the squad and all the subs that came on today made a big difference.’

Louth were a transformed team in the second period and Stewart said they just focused on doing what they do best.

‘We weren’t great in the first-half but in the second-half we showed how good we are at taking the ball, running, keeping the ball and taking our scores. That showed in the hard work that we’ve put in all year and credit to everybody on the team, everybody worked their socks off especially in the second half.

‘A lot of it is down to hard work in the first half we didn’t have boys coming off the shoulder, which was the big difference in the second half. We had a lot of men running off the shoulder from the middle third and I think that was the big difference.’