Corkery: we’re now facing Leinster’s finest

DUBLIN’S history of success against Louth will mean nothing in Saturday’s All-Ireland Qualifier because Peter Fitzpatrick’s team is “the best in Leinster”.

That’s the verdict of Blues forward Niall Corkery and it is one that he says is based on what Louth have produced this year.

The Wee County were denied the Leinster title by a dreadful refereeing decision on the part of Martin Sludden to award Joe Sheridan a goal in the dying seconds of the now infamous provincial decider.

With victories over Longford, Kildare and Westmeath before that, Louth are one of the form teams in the land and Corkery insists they’ll provide the Dubs with their toughest challenge to date.

All of which makes any consultation with a Kilmacud Crokes club man and former Louth manager superfluous. “Paddy Carr was involved with a different Louth team,” said Corkery at yesterday’s launch of the new Ulster Bank GAA iPhone app.

“They might have played the game differently. We have taken what we want to from Louth from this year’s performances. They’re the best team in Leinster and probably would-be champions.

“We know exactly what’s required. As I said, they’re the best team in Leinster this year. Just the same as we weren’t going into the Armagh game thinking ‘this is Armagh, they’ve won (an) All-Ireland in the past few years, we don’t stand a chance’, we’re also not going into this game thinking ‘this is Louth, Dublin traditionally beat them so we’ll be fine’.

“This year you’ve seen teams breaking from the mould. The would-be favourites from the last few years are crashing out to supposedly lesser teams. So we’re not taking anything like that. We’re just looking at Louth’s performances this year which are very good and they’ll be the best team of any we’ve faced this year.”

Although he once shared a rugby pitch with Jonny Sexton — the future international out-half inspired St Mary’s to defeat Blackrock College, for whom Corkery lined out at No. 8, in the Leinster Senior Cup semi-final eight years ago — by his own admission, the 25-year-old’s game has never been about glamour.

In that sense, he is the absolute prototype of what Pat Gilroy has looked to bring into the Dublin team this year, even if the goal on his debut against Tyrone in the league suggested otherwise.

“Players like myself would be more known for being grafters rather than blinding talents, but I think this team is built on workrate. I know what my job is... you know what you’re good at and you know why you’re in the team and what your management is looking off you any day.

“I was happy enough with (the goal)... I might have set the bar a bit high for myself,” he smiles.

The qualifiers might not have been the preferred route for Dublin but given their inability to translate Leinster titles to All-Irelands in the past five years, Corkery accepts that this might not necessarily be a bad thing.

This is a team in transition, he insists. He reads from the Gilroy hymn sheet when stating that Dublin are well off the standards set by Kerry, Cork or Tyrone and that talk of winning All-Irelands is fanciful at this stage.

“Judging by how we’ve performed so far, I’d say it might be quite a distance at the moment (between us and the top three). I don’t think we can really look at winning All-Irelands. We just have to take every game as it comes.”