WITH only three senior teams – St Fechin’s, Knockbridge and Dundalk’s Naomh Monnine – to pick from, Louth hurling manager Paul McCormack worked wonders with the Wee County last year.
Louth produced their best display of the season to overcome Longford in the Lory Meagher Cup final in May and they’ll hope to rekindle that form as they begin their 2023 campaign – almost eight months’ later – against McCormack’s Alma Mater Queen’s University in the Conor McGurk Cup next Tuesday night.
The QUB students beat Louth in this competition this time last year but the emphasis for McCormack is getting game-time into his players before they begin their Division 3B campaign.
St Fechin’s won the Louth club championship in 2022 and progressed to the Leinster junior semi-finals before bowing out against Wexford outfit Horeswood in late November. Meanwhile, players from the other two clubs haven’t seen much competitive action since July and urgently need some action before the National League throws-in.
“The three teams in Louth are very well-matched and the standard has risen,” said 2002 Sam Maguire winner McCormack who is now in his fourth year in charge.
“But they aren’t getting games – they can only play each other so often – so all those players are mad looking a game.”
McCormack’s training regime is game-based and the Keady native is constantly organising challenge matches against county, club and college teams. Between January last year and the Lory Meagher final (May 21) Louth played 21 friendlies.
“It’s the only way that our lads will develop,” McCormack explained.
“You need to be playing matches so we had to convince a lot of other teams that playing us was worthwhile and we’ll be trying to get that same pattern built in this year – playing at least one challenge game a week before the League starts. The fellas all want to play matches – you can train all you like but they all want to try and test themselves in games.”
Should Louth get past QUB next week, they’ll have a quarter-final to look forward to against Down.
After the McGurk Cup ends, Louth begin a Division 3A campaign that includes clashes with Armagh as well as Roscommon, Mayo, Fermanagh and Monaghan.
They go into that competition without half-a-dozen players from last year’s squad but McCormack has brought through some eager youngsters into his panel.
“You can’t force anyone to play, all you can do is try and make it attractive for them and make sure it’s a good environment to be in where training is good and they’re looked after well,” he explained.
“We had a squad of 27 last year and we’ve lost six, maybe seven, of them but we’ve picked up a few young boys so we’ll have the same numbers again.
“The core of the group are back and that is one of the reasons myself and Ruairi and Tony decided to go again. The nucleus of the team is there and they’re all good fellas who have been there this last three or four seasons. They’re all still keen to push and they can see that things have got better.
“They are all maturing as players and they have more experience under their belts which is a big thing for us.”
After forcing promotion from 3B in 2021, Louth were competitive in 3A last year but a draw against Warwickshire was their best result. However, they kicked on impressively to capture the county’s third Lory Meagher title, hitting 3-27 in the final against Longford.
“The teams in the League are all teams that we’ve faced before and we should be going in with a bit more belief and confidence,” said McCormack.
“I wouldn’t say we were psychologically beat before we went out but we were always just hoping to be in the match and trying to compete. This year we feel we can back ourselves a bit more and we’re working hard to bridge the gap.”
