Rath confident Reds can get their season back on track
TUESDAY morning’s All-Ireland football qualifier draw inevitably passed off without any great fanfare, but it did help the Louth players to put a demoralising defeat to old foes Meath behind them.
Unlike last year, the Reds had an extra week to lick their wounds, but stand-in captain Padraig Rath insists that they parked the derby defeat by Tuesday evening.
‘We could have spent the week feeling sorry for ourselves, but we got straight back into training on Tuesday night and we were looking forward to the draw on Tuesday morning.
‘We just said amongst ourselves that you have to keep the head down and keep at it and who knows we could still have a long summer ahead of us.
‘And I suppose the draw gave us something else to focus on when we came back on Tuesday too. Obviously we were very disappointed with out performance against Meath, we were well beaten in the en, and the draw maybe deflected our thoughts a bit from that.’
The fact that Louth were handed a winnable home draw against Division 3 outfit Longford must also have helped the mood at training, but Rath was quick to urge caution.
‘It was a very close game in Drogheda in the league. We’re about the same level, and they’ll be fancying coming over to Drogheda and reversing that result.
‘Hopefully we can get through it and into the next round. The losing provincial semi-finalists come in then and it steps up a level, but that’s what you want. Ultimately we want to be pushing on and challenging for a place in the quarter-finals or even semi-finals like Tipp last year.
‘I suppose the other side of that is if you lose again people will say we lost our way a bit. We lost to Sligo and Tipp and then beat Wicklow and lost the next two. After the league we had that would take a bit of the gloss off the season. But if you get another win or two it’s a very different season.’
After winning just two qualifiers in nine seasons Louth certainly can’t afford to take Longford for granted and Rath firmly believes the Reds can take the back door by storm.
‘We haven’t done much in the qualifiers. I remember the lads going on a great run in 2007 beating Limerick and Kildare and running Cork close, but we haven’t won too many since then and it would be great to go on that kind of run again.
‘People say the qualifiers don’t have the same appeal any more, but we still feel with a bit of luck and momentum we could get to the last eight or semi-finals.
‘You saw at the start of this year when we put that run together in the O’Byrne Cup it really stood to us in the league. That feel-good factor you have when you’re winning makes a big difference. You see the confidence rising in lads, even in training. After a couple of defeats you maybe start to question yourself, but you have to remember that we’re still very good footballers and that it’s just a matter of getting a couple of wins under our belt again.’
Like Louth, Longford suffered a heavy Leinster Championship defeat to Laois last time out, but Rath isn’t reading too much into the result.
‘I think Laois scored two goals either side of half-time and the game got away from Longford, so no more than us against Meath they won’t be reading too much into the size of the defeat.
‘They’ll brush it off fairly quickly and they’ll be gunning for us. With lads like Michael Quinn and Robbie Smyth they are dangerous so we have to be on top of our game. They’ve put together a few good qualifier runs and they beat Monaghan last year. But we really just have to focus on ourselves and be mentally ready for it.
‘It’ll be an advantage being home in Drogheda with hopefully a big crowd there, but at this stage you just want to be still involved in the championship. We’ll play anywhere at this stage.’