Football

Harte knows Louth must learn lessons of Dublin defeat quickly before hosting Cork

Louth's Mickey Harte at the end of the GAA Allianz Football League Division Three Final between Louth and Limerick  on 04-02-2022 at Croke ParknDublin.. Pic Philip Walsh.
Louth's Mickey Harte at the end of the GAA Allianz Football League Division Three Final between Louth and Limerick on 04-02-2022 at Croke ParknDublin.. Pic Philip Walsh. Louth's Mickey Harte at the end of the GAA Allianz Football League Division Three Final between Louth and Limerick on 04-02-2022 at Croke ParknDublin.. Pic Philip Walsh.

YEARS of experience meant Mickey Harte could raise a smile even in the aftermath of his Louth team having been destroyed by Dublin in Sunday's Leinster SFC Final.

'The wee county' must raise themselves to take on Cork in this weekend's Sam Maguire Cup Group 1 opener. The suggestion that the clash with the Rebels is the "most winnable" for Louth, with Mayo and Kerry to follow, brought a wry response from the Tyrone man:

"Well, I suppose every other team in the group will be saying we're the winnable game so Cork will be saying we're the winnable game. That's understandable.

"We played them in the League of course but they were missing a few players that day and we got a result. So, yeah, I suppose it's not going to be easy."

Even with the Red Hands Harte was on the wrong side of some heavy defeats, so he was able to keep the shellacking by the Dubs in perspective:

"I've been in places before where we got a very poor outcome. It's not the end of the world. It's another process of what can you learn from that, how can you adjust it and fix it.

"We haven't much time because the group that we're in now doesn't really possess second rate teams either so we have a lot of thinking to do, a lot of preparation to do to try and grab back some credibility of having the right to be in this level of the Championship."

Louth forward Sam Mulroy scored 0-10 against Dublin in the Leinster SFC Final on Sunday, but his county still lost by 21 points. Picture: Seamus Loughran
Louth forward Sam Mulroy scored 0-10 against Dublin in the Leinster SFC Final on Sunday, but his county still lost by 21 points. Picture: Seamus Loughran Louth forward Sam Mulroy scored 0-10 against Dublin in the Leinster SFC Final on Sunday, but his county still lost by 21 points. Picture: Seamus Loughran

Having taken Louth up from Division Four to Division Two, they finished third in that section, behind only Ulster champions Derry and the Dubs.

Harte believes Group 1 can benefit Louth, even though it might appear a daunting prospect: "Any game we go out to play from here on in is not going to be easy because you're at the tough end of season now but it's experience, players will learn from the experience.

"It's kind of going to be a wee taster for what Division One will be like if you're ever in it so maybe for a team like Louth to get a taste for that without having to be in it right now mightn't be a bad thing for their progression."

Harte accepted that Dublin had far too much talent for Louth, especially with the inclusion from the outset of three more stars: "Obviously, at the start, when you take [Niall] Scully and [Brian] Howard and [Jack] McCaffrey into the team, that sort of quality, that was a real welcome to us, seeing those three men starting. They were already a very good team but they had quality coming in.

"So, they had plenty of good players on before that and then when you put these three in they're just at a level that we're not capable of dealing with right now."

Yet he had words of praise for the supporters in red, who backed their team in great numbers and with loud enthusiasm:

"I must say that the Louth crowd, when we were in the game and playing with a bit of energy in the first 15 minutes, they were great and added to the atmosphere for 10 or 15 minutes. But we didn't give them much to cheer about apart from a couple of minutes before half-time and the first few minutes of the second half. But after that, Dublin just took over."

They are just a very good side and we are not at that level just now and we have to play teams like that to learn a lesson."

One aspect that needs immediate improvement is around winning possession from kick-outs, where Dublin dominated as they ran up 1-10 without replay from the 14th minute to the 33rd, taking the game away from Louth, literally and metaprorically.

Harte recognised that problem, but argued that there wasn't a simple solution against a side as strong in the middle third as Dublin:

"It was, it was. It wasn't even getting them clean all of the time, they were breaking them and breaking them to their advantage and we seemed to miss the breaks. We were in too late or we were too far away from them.

"It's a lesson we have to learn. It's a harsh lesson today but you just have to hold your hands up…

"I've always considered that it's very easy to look back on a video tape when the game is over and be wonderfully smart. There's lots of people can do that. It's not that easy when you're standing on the line having to deal with it. So, you do what you think is good.

"We played Dublin in the League and I know they hadn't the same personnel on the pitch but I thought we held our own very well in that game and I suppose we had no reason to doubt that we couldn't make a game of it again this time but, as it transpired today, we weren't able to do that."

Harte and his second-in-command Gavin Devlin will study the video themselves and come up with a plan to take on Cork on the last weekend of this month:

"You've always got to be thinking, you've always got to see what works, what doesn't work and even when things work sometimes you find that other people can unlock the things that work for you.

"It's a learning process for all of us, on and off the field, and we'll have to pick up the pieces and see what we can learn from it and see how we can go to a higher level ourselves in the next few games."