How Louth are quietly rising to the challenge

Cork v Louth: Gavin Cummiskeyon how, after losing five players from the panel and struggling against Wexford, Louth discovered what they were made off.

It's hard to know what lies beneath the surface of a team until they are backed into a corner. This is Louth's story.

Having played out an entertaining three-game series with Wicklow earlier this summer that eventually saw Mick O'Dwyer's latest charges banished to the outer reaches of the Tommy Murphy Cup, the holders of that competition strode into a Leinster quarter-final against a ring-rusty Wexford.

They lost 0-16 to 2-8 in what was described as the worst game in Croke Park for years.

As the people of Dublin and Meath poured into the stadium for the second instalment of their midsummer duel, problems were erupting in the caverns under the Cusack Stand. JP Rooney and Nickey McDonnell didn't return for the second half.

Afterwards, five Louth players took leave of the official team party, preferring to chart their own route home.

Rooney, McDonnell, David Reid, Christy Grimes and David Brennan were subsequently removed from the panel. The following week Jamie Carr and Mark Brennan announced their departure for the United States for the summer.

With half the team gone, Louth's chances of getting any change from Limerick at the Gaelic Grounds in round one of the qualifiers looked bleak.

Then something happened. A Mark Stanfield point deep in injury-time scuppered Limerick's hopes of a back-door revival. Then the shackles really came off as Louth sauntered down to Newbridge and beat Kildare.

Aaron Hoey has been on the intercounty scene for 11 seasons but has never experienced such joy in a Louth jersey.

"In the first two games against Wicklow we were atrocious. In the third game we came out and beat them comfortably but we didn't keep that up and Wexford rightly showed us up to be an ordinary team.

"That's what we are when we don't put in the effort. We took a week off and the boys became hungry again."

This was a long week for Louth football. The house of cards appeared to crumble. Eamonn McEneaney has a few zero-tolerance rules. Travelling home with the team is one of them. Unlike the about-turn performed in neighbouring Meath with Graham Geraghty, the door is shut on these players until 2008.

"The lads are gone," says Hoey. "They made their bed so now they must lie in it. Having said that, Eamonn is not a man to hold a grudge so I'm sure they can come back next season.

"It was a straightforward policy: if you travel to a game with the team you go home with the team. They made their choice."

Others have since started to excel.

"Paddy Keenan was 11 stone when he first came into the panel. He played on the wing and was regularly blown out of it. Now he is 14-and-half stone. A big man who can dominate a midfield battle against most."

Colin Goss shook off persistent injury to nail the full-back slot. Corner forwards Colm Judge and Shane Lennon took the experienced gained playing for UCD and transferred it to intercounty level.

A decent team begins to materialise when these players are combined with experienced men like Hoey, Stanfield and Darren Clarke.

"We got back into training and the boys stepped up. It carried us through against Limerick. We dug out a win. Against Kildare we decided to maintain that effort. If we stay with a team we always feel we have a good chance."

The loss of half their team did not upset the flow of training. The structures are in place for others to fill the void. Several teenagers have been on the periphery of the panel this season to ensure their eventual graduation to senior status is seamless. Those boys received numbers on their backs sooner than expected.

Hoey has seen plenty of fractures in Louth football panels before.

"Since I joined the panel it has happened. Once you are beaten in the championship a few lads would always head off to the States, whether to play football or to enjoy themselves, but with the qualifiers you have to make your choice early.

"A couple of players earmarked if we were beaten (in Leinster) they would head over. No one really harped on about it. It wasn't discussed at training. We had a meeting one night at training. We were told they were going and we said, 'Sure what can we do about it?' We didn't dwell on it.

"There was great work on the manager's part; he didn't let us dwell on it. He still had his 30 players down at training every night. If wasn't as if we were depleted."

That brings us around to McEneaney. The Monaghan man was given a five-year term back in 2005 as the county board sought a manager who could take them up the football ladder.

"It's a very professional approach," says Hoey. "Probably the best set-up in terms of team logistics since I joined the panel (in 1996). If you want anything you ask for it and it's there the next day. Most of the time you don't have to ask.

"Another thing is everyone has a chance of making the team right up until the Thursday before the game so it means everyone is trying their hardest in the week of a game."

The victories over Limerick and Kildare are all well and good but neither is much higher than Louth in the pecking order.

Cork would be one major scalp off the elite tier. Therein lies the real test of Louth's progression.

They possess the footballing talent to trouble anyone. They have the fitness to hold pace. But Laois showed in last week's Leinster final that all this counts for little when teams of Dublin's physicality up the ante. Cork have developed a power game akin to that of the three-time Leinster champions.

Louth played Dublin in a challenge match recently. They struggled, leaving Hoey under no illusions about what lies ahead.

"(Physically) we're not up there just yet.

"Cork are a team of All Stars. You start at the back you have Canty. In the middle of the field you have Murphy. Then Masters up front and they have a massive tradition in Gaelic football. We are totally up against it.

"If we can compete, we have the footballers there to do damage. But we must stay at their level and then we can develop on that afterwards, whether we win or lose."

Shades of Fermanagh in 2004. Who did they beat in the last qualifier? Ah yes, Cork.

What lies beneath . . .