Longford’s home comforts

TWO weeks ago, Mickey Harte stood on the Clones pitch ruminating on his team’s first defeat in the Ulster championship since 2008 and pointed out that things had worked out okay the last time they were directed through the back door.

Written off after their provincial defeat to Down, Tyrone were offered a gentle reintroduction to championship duties with a jaunt down the road to Drogheda where they accounted for Louth with eight points to spare.

Navigating their way home from the midlands tonight with championship aspirations still intact promises to be a more difficult task for a side that has fought accusations of decline since their last All-Ireland three years ago.

Not that everyone sees it that way.

Longford are few people’s idea of big-game hunters. This, after all, is a county with just one Leinster championship game in the last 10 years, one which only navigated its way out of the fourth tier of the league two months ago.

All of which only masks the fact they have been one of the trickiest customers in the 11-year history of the All-Ireland qualifiers and particularly at Pearse Park where two managerial greats have seen their careers crash to untimely ends.

Back in 2002, Pete McGrath called time on a 13-year stint with Down that produced two All-Ireland titles after a five-point loss there while John O’Mahony finally admitted defeat in his attempt to juggle the duties of a bainisteoir and a TD after Mayo’s loss last summer.

Dennis Connerton was manager when Longford sprang that first ambush in the qualifiers eight years ago and holds fond memories of the night they accounted for a side that boasted James McCartan and Mickey Linden.

“We played very good football that evening against Down,” Connerton remembered. “Paul Barden scored one of the best points I ever saw, running the length of the pitch and he still had the energy to kick over the score at the end of it.”

They threatened a repeat in the next round, leading Derry by three points at the break before the Ulster side outmuscled them to win by 10 but Longford finished that particular job four years later when they threatened a major breakthrough.

It started with a rare road trip for Dublin. Recently refurbished, Pearse Park was a riot of contrasting shades of blue on a glorious summer’s day but Mark Vaughan’s goal against the run of play gave the Dubs a two-point win.

Crushed at the time, Longford regrouped, tamed Waterford and returned to set up camp in their own back yard where they accounted for Tipperary and edged Derry by one-point in a thriller.

Luke Dempsey was manager then and equates that victory against Derry, and the outpouring of emotion from the supporters that followed in its wake, to his Carlow side’s defeat of Louth in Leinster earlier this year.

A dam of failure had finally cracked.

“You make your own tradition and belief comes from that,” said Dempsey.

“Start winning a few games at home and you can make your ground a fortress and Longford have started to do that at Pearse Park since that run in 2006.

“That win against Derry gave that group of players the belief to build on it. There are only something like 35,000 people in Longford but there is a great GAA tradition in the county, especially in the rural areas.”

Longford’s reward for their exploits against Derry was a shot at a Kerry side which, at the time, was perceived to be wobbling and one sucker punch away from the canvas after a six-point Munster final loss to Cork.

Kerry hadn’t scored a goal in four games before that tie in Killarney but Longford chose to play against the wind and, as fate would have it, this was on the same day that Jack O’Connor decided to try a young basketballer at full-forward for the first time.

Longford battled gamely but the hand of history was against them. Kerry ended up re-igniting their season, scoring three goals inside the first 16 minutes and four in total with Kieran Donaghy causing all sorts of mayhem and providing three of them.

“We were unfortunate that day,” said Dempsey. “I suppose we were the team that launched Kieran Donaghy’s career and I felt sorry for Barry Gilleran, our full-back, who was just up from the U21s. Like the rest of us, he didn’t know what was coming.”

Gilleran went through a rough patch after that – he was even dropped by his club – but has recovered since and will be one of ten U21s from that 2006 season buttressing the Longford seniors against Tyrone this evening.

“It is a great draw for Longford,” Connerton added. “They were very unlucky against Laois in the first round of Leinster a few weeks ago. They kicked something like 15 wides, which is unusual for them, but Tyrone is a great draw because they aren’t the team they were.

“It’s a long trip down to Longford and it might be an ever longer one back.”

Picture: GIANT KILLER: Manager Glenn Ryan celebrates Longford’s All-Ireland SFC qualifier win over Mayo at Pearse Park in June 2010. Picture: Inpho/James Crombie