Fitzer always felt Louth were on a hiding to nothing against a

LOUTH’S opening round win over Longford in 2010 kick-started a brilliant, but ultimately ill-fated summer odyssey, that kept supporters on the edge of their seats until deep into stoppage time of the Leinster final.

In hindsight a stumbling fourpoint victory over the midlanders was all about the result, but the performance suggested the Reds were going nowhere fast and would be easy pickings for a high-flying Kildare outfit next time out.

True to form, Peter Fitzpatrick didn’t view it like that at all and far from being downbeat, the newly appointed Louth chief saw nothing but positives leaving Portalaoise.

Ten years on, Fitzer still feels the same, insisting Louth were on a hiding to nothing in O’Moore Park. But he always saw the potential in the squad he inherited from Eamon McEneaney.

‘The Longford game was basically a clash of two teams wanting to go up a level. Glenn Ryan was over Longford and going into the game people were saying we should hammer them, but we knew it wouldn’t be like that. Longford had high hopes of causing an upset.

‘The team we fielded that day was the nucleus of the Leinster final team. We believed in them and we trusted them and while we maybe didn’t realise it at the time, in Paddy Keenan and Brian White we probably had the best midfield in the country that year.

‘Paddy was superb against Longford, he got us through that game and Brian was man-of-the-match against Kildare. Then you had Dessie Finnegan at fullback, Mick Fanning centre half, Mark Brennan on the forty and Shane Lennon at full forward. That was a really strong spine of big, physical and experienced men.’

It’s easy to forget that Louth’s journey to the Leinster final came in Fitzpatrick’s first year at the helm and came on the back of a run-ofthe-mill Division 3 campaign.

‘When I came into the job in 2009, let’s call a spade a spade, not too many were putting their name forward for the job. I remember reading Gerry Kelly’s column in The Argus the day after I was appointed, and he was basically saying, ‘Fitzer is mad to take the Louth job’. I did say to myself, ‘Oh Lord, what have I let myself in for?’

‘But we held trial matches over that winter and 90 different players turned up and I could see the appetite was out there to play for Louth. We narrowly avoided relegation to Divison 4 the year before and people were understandably a bit apprehensive.

‘But we put a nice wee squad together and made a good start to the National League with a win over Wexford. People didn’t really give us a chance in that game, because Wexford were going very well at the time.

‘Then we had Sligo away and lost that by a point and we were very unlucky and should have won. Sligo went up with Antrim that year and we finished two points behind them both so you could say that result denied us promotion in the end.

‘To be fair, the boys bounced back with a great win over Cavan in Drogheda, but I think the win that said this team has something was the one in Enniskillen. Paddy Keenan and Brian White were superb that day and JP [Rooney] scored 1-3. But the following game we were brought straight back down to earth by Roscommon, who only won one game that whole season - against us!

‘We got another kick in the teeth up in Casement Park against Antrim. They beat us by eight points but it could have been a lot more. We got a lot of criticism for that result, but I felt it was unfair. Antrim were ahead of us then and St Gall’s were going well, but we learned from that game. Antrim played a similar style to Kildare

back then too, so we used that experience in the Championship.

‘We produced another great display against Offaly, we scored five goals that day, I think Pepe [Smith] got three and JP two.’

But a team-bonding break in Donegal was exactly what the doctor ordered and Fitzer felt it was a turning point.

‘We went up to Donegal between the League and Championship and we got Brian McEniff to take a few sessions and he was so impressed with the team’s manners and attitude to training. That whole trip made us.

‘It brought the whole squad together. We had a buddy-buddy system where you did everything with the three lads you roomed with rather than letting cliques form and