Rejuvenated McDonnell is a h-andy addition

ANDY McDonnell insists he doesn’t regret taking time outut to travel and see the world and if his first few performances back in the red of Louth are anything to go by, the break did him the power of good.

‘I had played for Louth for four or five years and maybe felt I was just there and not doing a lot anymore,’ e,’ he reflected. ‘So I decided too get away and travel Americaa and Australia and I loved it. It was just under two years and I don’t regret it, I’d advise anyone to get away for a year or two if they can. But I’m back now and home is home, so hopefully now I can push on with Louth for the next few years.’

McDonnell missed the group stages of the O’Byrne Cup, lining out with UCD, but he is encouraged by the start Louth have made to 2017.

‘We started the season quite well and then we had that stumbling block against Dublin. I was only involved in the Meath and Dublin games.

‘We brought the intensity to the Meath game and didn’t back it up against Dublin.

‘But we’ve a good panel, there are 31 or 32 chomping at the bit and you can only play 15 and put 26 in the matchday squad. So we feel we have a panel that’s good enough for Division 2, but the first priority is to stay in Division 3 and maybe with four home games we might be able to surprise a few people.

‘I think we did tonight. No-one really expected us to come down here and topple Laois or to win by 12 points after that bit of a hiding we got against Dublin. But we knew within the panel that we could come down and take them. We did it a few years ago and it seems to be a nice stomping ground for us.

‘Hopefully it will continue and not turn out like other years when we win one game and don’t back it up. It’s a good win, we knew we had to start off well and hopefully we can follow it up with a win over Longford. There’s no point putting one foot forward and taking two steps back.’

McDonnell agreed that it was pleasing to put a mis-firing first-half display against Dublin to bed and he admitted they worked on their shooting in training in the build-up to the game.

‘We were quite ruthless today. We got a good telling-off at half-time against Dublin and that was probably badly needed. We could have gone four or five up, Colin said 10, but I don’t know about that! Four or five would have been nice, but when they came out after half-time we didn’t have any answers and they nearly bullied us.

‘Today we knew we had to start taking our chances. It’s a nice pitch here and it’s quite open, so I think it suits us. We practised a lot on our shooting and shooting under pressure and you have Colm Nally in this year and he’s top-class. So we’re quite happy with the return today, but the next match is the most important one now.’

Louth laid the foundations for victory by surging into a 1-7 to 0-2 lead by the 25th minute, but McDonnell felt the defensive performance was just as important, which was underlined by the first goal.

‘It was a wee bit against the run of play. They had a free in the bottom corner and we turned them over and we got forward in numbers and Pepe (Paraic Smith) finished it off well.

‘We worked on keeping the intensity high and doubling up on men in possession. It’s no real secret that we do that, but the workrate has to be high. The key is not to foul when you get two men there. You hassle and harry, but don’t foul and I think we did that very well today. It’s just good discipline and when we did turn it over we moved it quickly and got the scores.’

‘Look it’s only early days in the league. We’ll just focus on the Longford match now and take it one step at a time.’