Leinster Club Senior Football Championship final: Moorefield (Kildare) v St Loman's (Westmeath) (tomorrow, 2pm, O'Moore Park, live on TG4)
FOR more reasons than one, there is a novel feel around tomorrow’s Leinster final pairing. First of all, you have to go back to 2009 for the last time the provincial showpiece took place without a team from Dublin in either corner.
Clubs from the capital have dominated during that period, winning six of the seven Leinster titles up for grabs, with St Vincent’s (2014) and Ballyboden (2016) going on to land the Andy Merrigan Cup on St Patrick’s Day.
But when Wicklow’s Rathnew stunned Vincent’s at the quarter-final stage, suddenly it was game on for every other county champion looking up the ladder.
Yet even when you look outside Dublin, Moorefield and St Loman’s are not exactly provincial heavyweights. The Kildare champions have been in this position once, beating Rhode in the 2006 decider, while St Loman’s will be competing in their first Leinster final.
Neither, therefore, will be coming into tomorrow’s game at O’Moore Park with the kind of swagger and self-belief that consistent success at this level brings. Rather, it is a chance to carve out a niche in the history books and to deliver days, weeks and months that the community in which they are embedded will never forget.
It’s a long time until the end of February after all, when the winner will come up against either London champions Fulham Irish or Galway kingpins – and raging hot favourites to win in Ruislip tomorrow – Corofin.
The bookies have found it hard to split the pair, but perhaps the deciding factor could be the man wearing the bainisteoir’s bib for St Loman’s.
Former Carlow boss Luke Dempsey was in charge of Moorefield in 2013 and 2014, leading them to Kildare titles in both years, and will have the inside line of many of the men lining out in green.
For example, forward Eanna O’Connor - son of legendary Kerry manager Jack - has been in superb form this year and Dempsey was is responsible for bringing him and brother Cian to Moorefield when he was in charge.
Cian O’Connor was shown a red card in the semi-final win over Rathnew and is unavailable, but Eanna poses a major threat to his former manager.
Since leaving Kildare, Dempsey had led Mullingar-based St Loman’s to three championships on the spin, making it five county titles in-a-row between tomorrow’s two finalists. However, he has yet to get either over the line in Leinster, and that remains his main priority.
Considering Garrycastle, in 2011, remain the only club from Westmeath to have gone all the way to provincial glory, it would be some achievement.
He is aware they will have to up their game from what they have shown so far, with St Loman’s forced to recover from terrible starts to edge through against first St Columba’s, Mullinalaghta when they were six points down with 12 minutes left, and then Simonstown Gaels in the semi-final.
On that occasion they turned a seven point deficit into a two point winning margin at Cusack Park, with county star John Heslin proving their talisman throughout this run to the Leinster final, bagging a brilliant 1-7 against St Columba’s and 0-6 in victory over the Meath men.
Heslin may have grabbed the headlines, but St Loman’s have quality across the field, with Paddy Dowdall an inspiration from centre back all season, while Paul Sharry, Ken Casey and Shane Dempsey are all potential match-winners.
Moorefield, though, probably hold the edge when it comes to experience and, in a game where the stakes are so high for two clubs unused to finding themselves in this position, that could be crucial.
As well as danger man O’Connor, captain Daryl Flynn has been there and done it all during an impressive career with club and county, as has fellow veteran Ronan Sweeney.
Corner-forward Niall Hurley-Lynch also poses a significant threat and, while Luke Dempsey may know plenty about tomorrow’s opponents, it may not be enough to stop his men coming off the field second best.
