Byrne feels Reds have turned corner

DECLAN Byrne has been around long enough to know the potential pitfalls facing Louth in Portlaoise on Sunday afternoon.

The St Mochta’s man kicked two points in a comfortable and impressive victory over Carlow at O’Moore Park two years ago, but he was there in 2011 too when the Barrowsiders pulled off a huge shock against the 2010 Leinster runners-up.

And after their respective league campaigns, Byrne is wary of the threat posed by Turlough O’Brien’s team on Sunday - but he’s also confident Louth can rise to the challenge.

‘They’re coming off a fantastic league and they nearly claimed a few scalps in the championship last year. They did well against Dublin and nearly beat Monaghan. So they’re on a high and you could say we’re on a low, but it certainly doesn’t feel like a low. There’s been a good atmosphere in the camp the last four or five weeks, we’ve trained hard and everyone is ready to go.

‘The atmosphere has been good since we left our ‘horrible league’ as we call it behind us. The championship brings out the best in everyone, so there’s been a bounce in everyone’s step over the last five weeks and training has gone well.

‘It’s been a hectic few weeks, with club games in there as well, but we’ve been lucky enough with injuries and it’s all guns blazing again for Sunday.’

April may have been a testing month for Byrne and his colleagues, but he feels that getting back to basics with the club has been a blessing in disguise, even if it did mean a heavy workload.

‘It was good to get the confidence up back with the club because by the end of the league it wasn’t a nice place to be.

‘It was a frustrating dressing room to be in because there were parts of games where we played well and competed, but if you only play for 10 or 15 minutes at the highest level you will get beaten.

‘But look, it’s long gone now at this stage. Either you win or you learn, and we took very harsh lessons from that league campaign. We were playing at a higher level and we lost several players from the previous year.

‘I think the first day was massive because that Down game was there for the taking.

‘Maybe with a new and young squad we didn’t believe we could get over the line, but it was there for the taking and I think if we had won that game the league might have gone a different way. ‘But we didn’t and the heads went down from there and we struggled to get any momentum. ‘But the last two performances were a bit better. Down in Clare we were hit with sucker punches with the goals, but we played reasonably well, and against Meath for 40 or 50 minutes we parked the bus to a certain extent, but we stayed in the game and it was there, but maybe the confidence levels weren’t there to get over the line. ‘The league is gone now, but we’re eager to play at that Division 2 pace because we know if we do it will be good enough to beat Carlow.’ Their opponents suffered a big blow in losing Brendan Murphy to the US this summer, but Byrne says Carlow are certainly not a one-man show.

‘It seems a funny one, I don’t know what his reasons are, but he destroyed us in 2011. I remember him kicking points from the sideline and everything.

He’s a huge loss, but they’ll have someone to fill the void and they have other good players, it’s not all about Brendan Murphy. We’ll have to watch the likes of Paul Broderick and Sean Murphy, they’ve been going well.’

But after that ‘horrible’ league Louth will be focusing on their own performance this week and Byrne just hopes they peak at the right time.

‘We’ve put a lot emphasis on the league the last few years to get out of Four and then up to Division Two. ‘We’ve been knocked back now, but let’s hope this year we can get a championship run going because you’re measured on championship. If you have a good championship a lot of people forget about the league.

‘You just have to look at Carlow and the buzz they created last year.

‘The way we see it, it’s a 50/50 game. The bookies are never too far wrong and Carlow are no big price. We’ll just have to perform, that’s the bottom line or we’ll be exiting the championship.’