GAELIC GAMES:WITH A great sense of karmic inevitability, Louth and Meath will meet in the first round of the All-Ireland football qualifiers later this month – a rematch of their highly-controversial Leinster football final of 11 months ago.

On that occasion Louth were infamously robbed of certain victory by an illegal Meath goal, carried over the line by Joe Sheridan, and in the bitter aftermath much of Louth’s dismay at the outcome was that they weren’t at least offered a replay. In many ways they’ve got it now – and with that created the headline act for the first round of the qualifiers, all scheduled to take place on Saturday, June 25th.

Louth, as the first team drawn in the pairing, are entitled to a home venue, but given the limited capacity of their home ground in Drogheda – around 4,000 maximum – it is more likely the GAA’s Central Competitions Control Committee will opt for a neutral venue.

Páirc Tailteann in Navan would, in fact, be the most convenient and suitable venue, but Louth certainly won’t want to hand Meath the home advantage – and the game may well be fixed for Newry.

Either way, it will make for a fascinating encounter, although on current form Meath will be fancied to progress. They surrendered their Leinster title in their first defence against Kildare in the Leinster quarter-final last Sunday week, a game also marked by the controversial disallowing of a Graham Geraghty goal after a hotly-contested square-ball verdict.

Louth were initially fancied to come through the so-called easier side of the Leinster draw, but that ended at the first hurdle too yesterday, when they lost out to Carlow, as Brendan Murphy kicked an injury-time winner to complete a surprise victory in Portlaoise – and send Luke Dempsey’s side into the last four of the Leinster championship.

All teams drawn first out of the hat in last night’s draw will benefit from home advantage – except where a team was drawn away for the second year running. The only exception on that basis was the Westmeath-Antrim tie; Antrim were drawn away in the first round last year, to Kildare – although actually forced a replay, which was played in Belfast.

Westmeath went down heavily to Wexford on Saturday evening, 1-24 to 0-15, and must now travel to Belfast to get their campaign back on track.

The draw included the 16 counties that failed to qualify for their respective provincial semi-finals – and thus consisted of Down, Antrim, Fermanagh, Monaghan, Cavan, Wicklow, Longford, Meath, Louth, Westmeath, Offaly, Laois, Clare, Tipperary, Sligo and London (New York remain excluded).

Cavan came off a heavy 2-14 to 1-8 defeat to Donegal and got some consolation when handed a home draw against Longford. However, Longford did push Laois to the limit in the Leinster first-round game and will have similar ambitions of progressing.

Laois will meet Tipperary for the second successive year. Laois will have home advantage this time, but went down 0-13 to 0-12 to Tipperary in Thurles last year. All venues and throw-in times for the eight games will then be decided this afternoon.

Meanwhile, the stand-off between several intercounty managers and RTÉ over the apparent status of commentator Brian Carthy has ended, with Mickey Moran of Leitrim, among those deemed to have withdrawn co-operation for match-day interviews, speaking with RTÉ after the Connacht semi-final with Roscommon.

First named teams at home, ties to be played June 25th

CLARE v DOWN

LAOIS v TIPPERARY

ANTRIM v WESTMEATH

LOUTH v MEATH

LONDON v FERMANAGH

CAVAN v LONGFORD

WICKLOW v SLIGO

OFFALY v MONAGHAN