Dempsey over the moon for ‘fantastic’ bunch of players

LUKE DEMPSEY has known some great days as a manager, despite always being associated with the underdog.

Westmeath captains lifted All-Ireland trophies at minor and U21 level under his watch, and while Longford didn’t win titles with Dempsey in charge, they became a team nobody wanted to play, particularly in Pearse Park.

The Carlow job was the most difficult he had ever taken on and he put the enormity of this success into perspective, when ranking it amongst his own list of achievements.

“That’s as good as any” he declared. “Sometimes you wonder are those days ever going to come back again.

“You’re working so hard, you’re doing the same things over and over — maybe a bit differently because you’re trying to tweak your approach — but that goes down with any of them. The group of lads are as committed as any of the teams I’ve been involved with that have had success. You could see yourself.

“We’re overjoyed and it makes all the hard work worthwhile.”

That hard work included a weekend training camp at Johnstown House and according to Dempsey, it was critical.

“Every county should be afforded the opportunity to start the championship in early June. It gives you that chance to have very intensive and good training and that’s what we did. We worked so hard with the 26 players that committed to Carlow.

“They are fantastic lads because we had a lot of issues during the year where players would not commit to the county cause which takes dedication and commitment but what we got out of the 26 in the last few weeks has been phenomenal.”

He wants his men to kick on though, even if he smilingly asserts that they will be massive underdogs again against Wexford.

“If we get one morale-boosting victory it’s no good, because it goes back to the same old story. A good performance against Derry last year meant nothing to the players in the qualifiers. So I’m just over the moon for the players because only that group know how hard they have worked.”

Louth’s Peter Fitzpatrick was surprised by the number of yellow cards dished out by Derek Fahy (13) given that it wasn’t a dirty game and felt that Dessie Finnegan’s sending off was harsh but would not consider it a factor in his team’s demise.

“I have to take my hat off to Carlow, they plugged away” said the Louth manager. “Most teams when they’re three points up and all of a sudden find themselves three points down they give up but they never gave up.

“I have no complaints at all… I thought Dessie was very unlucky to be sent off but I’m not going to blame that for the defeat. We were three points up with ten minutes to go and we just couldn’t hold it. There were just continuous errors. All we needed was a wee bit of composure and we just hadn’t got it in the last ten minutes.”