THE DREAM CAN only continue for one this weekend.
On one side of the white line is a club who lifted their first senior championship crown since 2008 earlier this month. The opposition also ended a long wait for top tier honours this year, one that stretches all the way back to 1995. They survived the added challenge of a replay in order to earn that reward.
As is tradition, the representatives from the Colmcille club in Longford, and Ardee of Louth, have been showcasing their silverware while touring the local schools in their aftermath of their wins.
For many of the students enjoying the company of their local heroes, this is their first experience of seeing their club win the ultimate prize in the county championship. Living through such celebrations for the first time during those formative years leaves a lasting impression on young Gaels.
Today offers both sides the chance to add to that success as the Leinster club championship begins. Ardee will host Colmcille in the provincial opener.
For Colmcille, the path to provincial glory looks even clearer having watched their north Longford neighbours Mullinalaghta scale the heights in 2018. The two sides also met in this year’s Longford SFC decider.
“They’re the standard-bearers in Longford,” says Colmcille manager Mickey Harkin whose son Ruairi scored the decisive penalty in their defeat of Mullinalaghta.
“To come from a small area and achieve what they did is an inspiration, and they’re what we have to aspire to in trying to get to that level.”
After Mullinalaghta’s success in 2018, the players famously visited the graves of clubmates who won county titles in 1948 and 1950 to remember their part in the side’s long road to triumph. Colmcille followed that example in the wake of their 2022 victory, calling to the graves of club stalwarts Dan Mulligan and Eugene McGee to honour their memory.
“It was just after the meal [when] they said they were going up to the grave and that was it,” says Harkin about the powerful gesture.
“They’re good lads and they’re well grounded. Dan was a great club stalwart. He was chairman and he used to look after the jerseys. He was there for every training session and he died earlier this year. It was just something they took on themselves and something they wanted to do. He’d be there cheering and roaring, picking up bibs and he was a great man.”
Harkin originally comes from Granard but has lived in Colmcille for some 30 years and has years of underage coaching experience with many of the current seniors. His father is also a native of the area.
“They’ve underachieved in the last 14 years,” Harkin continues, “promising a lot and not delivering. [I think] we had a different approach this year. We changed how we think about football, and our culture as well. We took baby steps the whole way through.”
Just over the road from Colmcille, past the border into Cavan, lies the Gowna club. They too have brought county championship success recently to their area after ending a 20-year title wait. There are plenty of connections between the two spots.
“Gowna are our neighbours,” says Harkin, “and we’re actually using their pitch midweek. Our own lights wouldn’t be great for match situations.
“We know Gowna very well and a lot of them would have gone to school in Cnoc Mhuire in Granard.
“I trained Gowna for a couple of years and I’d know a lot of their players.”
One key factor that could separate the sides today is the replay which Ardee were forced to navigate to get to the summit of Louth. They played out a 1-12 apiece draw with Newtown Blues earlier this month in awful weather conditions, but managed to prevail at the second time of asking last weekend.
Colmcille have an extra week of rest on their opponents, but Ardee manager Cathal Murray believes there is no such disadvantage holding his side back.
“We’re going nearly three weeks now so it’s no big deal,” says the Down native.
“Obviously for the older guys who might need a wee bit of extra time but we just tailored the training this week for that.
“There were a few celebrations after it as well which needs to be taken into the equation but we’re just getting on with it.
“They have to enjoy it, you can’t hold them back. You wait for so long [to win], you don’t want to stifle. It’s something to savour. We came back to the club the other night and it was just manic until the early hours.
“We’ve been going from January and the players decided a number of weeks ago that they were going to sacrifice the social aspect of their lives and really go for this.
“So it was never going to be questioned that they were going to enjoy it.”
Ardee made similarly bright starts in the draw and replay clashes with Newtown Blues, but Murray points to the experience in his bench as being the major influence in the outcome of their second meeting.
“Ronan Carroll came on at half-time and really had 30 minutes that we all knew he was capable of. Ronan would have started a lot of the league games and still had a major role to play.
“You can’t beat the experience of someone who has played at the highest level for Louth and having been involved in three previous county finals. His experience, along with a few others, and who had the hurt of losing finals, was key. They were advising boys on what was needed in preparing for this one.”
In Colmcille, the team is blessed with players with strong inter-county experience. Declan Reilly, who is arguably one of Longford’s greatest ever defenders, is still delivering for his club long after departing the inter-county scene. Lively forward Barry McKeon battled back from a hamstring injury which he picked up in this year’s quarter-finals to hit three points in the county showpiece.
Their goalkeeper is Noel Farrell, who previously played as a defender during his Longford career but has undergone a huge positional switch under Harkin’s guidance.
“I was selector with Glenn Ryan with Longford,” Harkin begins. “We played Kerry in a qualifier in Pearse Park and Noel was wing-back. He quit this year and he wasn’t going to play. I had a chat with him a few times and got him out.
“I think he thought I was messing [about playing in goal] at the start. I put him in goal and he said, ‘What are you doing with me?’ and I said, ‘We’ll see how it goes.’
“He came around to it. He has a good kick of the ball and used to take ’50s at one stage. He had a good pair of hands on him from playing outfield.”
Ardee St Mary’s are the 2022 Anchor Tours SENIOR CHAMPIONS ⚪️🔵
— Louth GAA (@louthgaa) October 16, 2022
Congratulations to Tom Jackson todays Man of the Match after a super performance
James Mc Gillick and Jamie Rooney alongside Captain RJ Callaghan lifted the Joe Ward and is taking it back to ARDEE after 27 years 🏆 pic.twitter.com/4eE5V6p9B2
Prior to last Sunday, Ardee reached the Louth senior championship final four times since their ’95 victory. Incidentally, Ardee also played a Longford side when they progressed to the Leinster stage that season, as they took on Killoe.
At home, their more recent disappointments came in 2016 and 2020, leading to a belief locally that they were close to snapping their losing streak. The emergence of a strong group of underage talents has added to the sense of expectation.
“They’ve been building this last couple of years,” says Murray, “and you have a young crop coming through who haven’t really lost anything so maybe there was an expectation in 2020 that they just had to turn up and win it, and it didn’t happen that way.
“I worked with some of them for two years with Louth and knew the talent that was there. So, for me to get the opportunity to be involved with them was very exciting.
“There’s no fear of any of the teams. We beat St Martins in the semi-final and they had won the last two and the [Newtown] Blues had won the previous three before that.”
Ardee have just started to learn about Colmcille’s way of playing in the last few days ahead of their showdown on Sunday, while the Longford champions took a look at what’s coming up when they watched the replay of the Louth final.
The dream can only carry on for one of them at the end of this weekend.
“The game is in their home ground in Ardee,” says Harkin, “so that’s a disadvantage for us straight away. Their familiarisation with the surroundings and the pitch is a huge bonus.
“But if you get that one game, you don’t know what’s going to happen. We’re on a journey as it is and we’ll see where it takes us.”
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