McEneaney: proving people wrong is great

IT threatened to break them but instead it made them. Nearly four weeks after seven of their players walked off the panel and here Louth are, one of the top 12 teams in the country.

The obituaries were already written by the time they were drawn away to Limerick in the first round of the qualifiers and the forecast was just as gloomy when they made the trip to face Kildare last Saturday.

“It’s always great to do stuff that people say you can’t do,” said manager Eamon McEneaney. “It’s great to think that we are in the last 12 after the disappointment of the Wexford defeat and what happened since.

“You have to give great credit to the players. They have worked so hard at their game. The lads who have come in have had a freshness and a hunger as well.”

The loss of the seven didn’t hurt as much as it might have done other counties. McEneaney has been operating with an extended 39-man panel all year so when the gaps opened the raw materials were there to fill them.

Most of the new faces parachuted into action are youngsters. Most are barely out of their teens, the oldest is 25, but all of them came ready-made for action despite their inexperience.

“People who weren’t familiar with Louth were thinking we had to go looking for new players. They were there all along. It was only a matter of time before some of these guys were included anyway.” Corner-back Mick Fanning is typical of the new breed’s compatibility with inter-county football — he restricted John Doyle to just one point from play in last weekend’s defeat of Kildare.

On the panel since the qualifiers last year, he made his debut in the Tommy Murphy Cup and played a few of the earlier league games this year before picking up a hamstring injury.

That and his physiotherapy studies in Stoke kept him on ice until the post-Wexford exodus and most of the others have similar tales to tell of injuries and commitments.

“I said at the start of the year that we were a lot stronger in terms of depth than last year,” said McEneaney. “The league results didn’t reflect that but there was a number of factors.

“Maybe the thing went a little bit stale. A lot of the lads had been going for a long time but we still have a good bit of experience there.”

That they do. A cursory glance at the team-sheet from last week throws up names like Aaron Hoey, Paddy Keenan and Colin Goss, players who reek of experience and no little talent.

“They are all very good footballers and, with the newer lads coming in, it has given it a nice mix. There is a new freshness and hunger about them team because the older lads see these guys trying to come in and fill their shoes and they respond to that.”

Disappointing though their league and Leinster campaigns have been this year, McEneaney never lost his faith that here was a team with something special brewing inside them.

They showed a glimpse of it last year when they played one of the summer’s best games, a qualifier against then All-Ireland champions Tyrone that finished at 2-16 apiece.

Unlike Mickey Harte’s team then, Cork come to the table in Portlaoise this week with considerable momentum behind them. This is their greatest test yet.

McEneaney is a huge admirer of Billy Morgan’s but he looks at the two team’s recent experiences against Donegal and he sees reason for optimism.

Last year, Louth beat the Ulster side convincingly in a Division Two final replay while Cork struggled to beat them in an All-Ireland quarter-final in Croke Park. That said, he isn’t naive about the task awaiting him.

“They have star quality, they are a big physical team. They were there or thereabouts against Kerry and probably could have taken them in the Munster final.

“They will probably feel that they can do what Kerry did last year, come through the back door and get the extra games and win the All-Ireland. That’s the feeling I get off them anyway and they probably have the artillery to do it.

“We have nothing to lose. The pressure is on Cork to produce the goods. It will be a tremendous experience for the younger lads and a great opportunity for the older lads to pit their wits against the likes of Nicholas Murphy, Pearse O’Neill and James Masters.”