In July/August 1988, Yazz and the Plastic Population flew rocket-like to the top of the UK popular music charts with their one and only hit of note. 'The Only Way Is Up' was a cover of the title track from Otis Clay's 1982 album and it spent five weeks at the top of the singles charts in the summer of '88, on its way towards becoming the top selling single of the year. Two decades later, it could be the soundtrack to Louth football's most recent campaign When trying to think of a heading and/or theme for this year's retrospective look at the Wee County seniors' season, two 'candidates' sprung instantly to mind, beating a mantra across my fevered mind: 'The Only Way Is Up' and 'Things Can Only Get Better'. Two songs with ostensibly depressing lyrics but ridiculously uplifting beats; ideal for putting a positive spin on a disappointing run of events. In the end, I gave Northern Ireland's D:Ream the shove and went with Yazz, who would probably be a better footballer Cutting to the chase, 2008 was a desperately disappointing year for Louth football. This time, there were no extenuating circumstances, no hard-luck stories, no controversial decisions that went against the team. (Apart from injuries, which are part and parcel of every team's season.) The Reds were well beaten in their only two outings in the senior football championship, and just about maintained their Division Three status in the national football league (with three wins from seven outings). When a county team fails to eke out a solitary win during the months of May, June and July - never mind August or September! - then it's not easy to salvage any positives from the ruins. Still, it's worth noting that management was in the middle of a FIVE-year plan, that nobody said it was going to be easy, and that blips are all part and parcel of sport. Also, the players gave of their all, worked and trained tirelessly all year, and the County Board did everything it could to support them and give them every chance. This includes standing up to Croke Park and insisting that home advantage was not taken away from the Wee County (as has so often been the case before) when they were paired with Tyrone in the first round of the qualifiers. The only positive thing about the year was that Louth avoided the ultimate embarrassment of dropping down to Division Four and the Tommy Murphy Cup, though cynics might point out that at least such a scenario would provide the team with an opportunity to win some games. Putting things into perspective, it must be pointed out also that - in Dublin and Tyrone (who went on to contest a quarter-final in mid-August) - the Wee County were beaten by two of the best teams in the country in the championship, while Division Three was an uncannily competitive section containing a host of teams that would subsequently enjoy spectacular championship runs - Down (who beat Tyrone in Ulster), Fermanagh (Ulster finalists), Limerick (who knocked Meath out) and Wexford (Leinster finalists and All-Ireland semi-finalists). Hardly the kind of opposition you would expect to meet in the third tier, so it would be fair to say that the restructuring of the league wasn't a success this year and it could take a while for things to level out fully. In the first round of the league, Louth lost to Limerick by 1-10 to 0-9 at the Gaelic Grounds in Limerick on Sunday February 3. A half-decent effort but a disappointing start to the competitive year nonetheless, with key points dropped already. A fortnight later, they were on the wrong end of a one-point defeat to neighbours Down in Drogheda, 1-14 to 2-10. Jamie Carr and Shane Lennon fired the Louth goals in that one but the hosts were undone by a last-gasp point from Paul McComiskey. Unlucky. On March 2, Eamonn McEneaney's side finally got some points on the board by virtue of a thumping 2-17 to 2-8 defeat of a Leitrim team that was Tommy Murphy Cup bound. Another one-point defeat ensued, this time to Fermanagh at Lisnaskea on March 16 (0-11 to 0-10) but Louth gave themselves a real boost when crushing Longford by 2-21 to 0-14 at Pearse Park on March 30. The Reds produced a powerful second-half display in this game and nine different players got on the scoresheet, including 2-3 from full forward Shane Lennon. Back-to-back victories were completed when Connacht champions Sligo were sent packing from Dundalk a week later (by virtue of a Ronan Carroll point in the fifth minute of injury time and goals from Colm Judge and Shane Lennon), on April 6. Louth's Division Three status was thus safe with a game to spare. They completed their programme when an understrength team lost to Jason Ryan's focussed Wexford by 2-16 to 0-15 in a low-key affair at Wexford Park on Sunday April 20, a game that confirmed promotion for the hosts, who went on to win the Division Three title outright before embarking on a phenomenal championship run.. While there was a sense of relief in the camp that the Reds had avoided the dreaded drop to Division Four and the Tommy Murphy competition, it must also be pointed out that it was a disappointing overall campaign as Louth started out with genuine aspirations of sealing promotion to Division Two but never really got within sight of this aim. Most of their defeats may have been narrow, but the reality is that Louth had only three meaningful competitive wins all year and these came against pitiful Connacht pair Sligo and Leitrim and a bad Longford side. A fortuitous and controversial 2-7 to 0-12 win over a floundering Yeats County combination (who would subsequently lose to London in the Tommy Murphy Cup) on the first Sunday of April would be Louth's last win at senior level for at least ten months. Successive defeats to Wexford (league), Dublin (Leinster championship) and Tyrone (qualifiers) meant the Wee County would have to wait until the NFL resumed in February 2009 to get their next win under their belts. A famine, thus - not quite of 1957-???? proportions, but frustrating all the same. In terms of using the national league as a platform from which to launch a decent championship challenge, Louth failed. Had they managed to turn those two one-point defeats into one-point victories, it might have been a different story, but such are the margins Injuries to key men - most notably Paddy Keenan, Peter McGinnity and Colin Goss - at crucial times during the secondary competition certainly didn't help the backroom team get any kind of consistency going and the lack of continuity was evident when the championship started. (Neither Goss nor McGinnity featured in the championship either, a massive blow as these are two of the county's most influential players. The Pats man had been named captain for the year, while McGinnity was captain in 2007.) For the first half of the clash with Dublin at Croke Park, the Reds looked truly impressive and they hung onto the Dubs' coattails with tremendous spirit, before eventually running out of steam, losing their shape and looking increasingly disjointed as the match went on. Dublin won by 13 points in the end but were disappearing across the Jones Road horizon as the long whistle sounded to put paid to Louth's Leinster hopes. There had been a lot of talk in the build-up to this game about Louth's last championship win over the Dubs - in a replay at Navan in 1974 - but there was no repeat of those Damien Reid inspired heroics here. Alas, the first half in Croke Park would be the highlight of Louth's year, performance-wise. While a lot of people are angry and frustrated by the lack of progress being made by Louth football (compared to, say, Wexford), it's worth remembering that every team is entitled to one bad year and the Wee County definitely made progress in the first two years under Eamonn McEneaney's leadership. Two-thousand-and-eight didn't produce any real advancement of note, but more than anything the results served to highlight how well the team had been faring 2006-2008 - and how much work still needs to be done. When McEneaney took over, it was almost 50 years since Louth had last won a Leinster SFC, yet many were expecting the Delaney Cup to come down the N1 in a matter of months. This was unreasonable. An early run of good form heightened expectations to lofty levels. The draw with then All-Ireland champions Tyrone in Navan in '06 and the qualifier wins over Kildare and Limerick in '07 had caused an outbreak of optimism. Now that those levels have not been maintained for a third successive year, the opposite applies: people are over-reacting to reality's bite, foolishly suggesting that the manager's three years in charge have been a failure and that Louth should chop and change at the helm once more. Ultimately, it's not all about the manager, though - it's down to the players and Louth clearly have a long way to go before they'll challenge for a provincial crown at senior level. Perhaps it's better to stick than twist. What 2008 has done more than anything is place Louth's status firmly in perspective. Eamonn McEneaney's vision was for a five-year programme and no decision can be made on whether this has been a success UNLESS the term is finished. It may all seem futile and frustrating at times but patience and perseverance are more constructive virtues that tossing toys from prams every time a string of unfavourable results appears. Could Mick O'Dwyer or Sean Boylan have done any better with the cards Eamonn McEneaney was dealt in '08 (in terms of fixtures and squad make-up)? We'll never know. Supporting and speculating go hand in hand. There is no science, no fact, no certain knowledge. But ask this: how far would Galway, Cork, Derry, Armagh or Wexford have gone in the championship in 2008 if they had been asked to play Dublin in the first round of Leinster and Tyrone in the first round of the qualifiers? And how far would Louth have gone if they'd had Kildare's draw - the relegated Lilywhites lost to Wicklow (!) and then edged out Cavan, Limerick and a shattered Fermanagh side to reach an All-Ireland quarter-final. Them's the breaks. The luck of the draw plays a big part in the fortunes of any team in any given year and Lady Luck did not smile favourably on the Wee County in '08. When Louth faced Dublin in the first round of Leinster at Croke Park on Sunday June 8, Pillar Caffrey's charges - en route to a fourth successive provincial title - stepped it up in the second half to launch their campaign with a facile 1-22 to 0-12 victory. The visitors stayed with their illustrious opponents for 43 minutes but had no answer once the men in blue upped the tempo after the resumption. Dublin went ahead early on but Louth levelled via a Derek Crilly free after a foul on Colm Judge and then took the lead when Aaron Hoey split the posts into the Hill end. The defending champions went back in front and had a lucky break when their crossbar was rattled at the end of a piercing Louth move. A combination of Stephen O'Shaughnessy and Ross McConnell forced the ball to safety as Judge tried to pounce. Super points from Judge and Hoey had Louth deservedly back ahead but the Sky Blues equalised with a Conal Keaney free. Brogan turned his man brilliantly but - not for the first time - Stuart Reynolds made a good save between the Wee County sticks to keep the underdogs on level terms, 0-4 apiece. The Dubs moved three points clear before, two minutes into added time, Louth got their first score in 20 minutes when Reynolds' accurate kick-out found Adrian Reid, who picked out Crilly. The Dundalk Gaels youngster hit a lovely score on the run to leave Eamonn McEneaney's charges within touch at the break, 0-7 to 0-5. Louth started the second half brightly with a fine Shane Lennon point but Dublin took that as their cue to up the ante and they rattled off quickfire points through Sherlock, Quinn, Moran and Brogan. On 42 minutes, Ray Finnegan got forward to clip over a nice Louth score that closed the gap to four. The margin was down to three when Paddy Keenan made a fine catch and picked out his midfield partner Ronan Carroll: the Ardee man showed great pace and drove over a nice point. Unfortunately, that was as good as it got for the visitors as a 44th minute Alan Brogan goal effectively ended the contest. From here on, it was all Dublin, though Louth did muster further scores from Hoey, substitute Brian White, Keenan and Lennon. Louth, 2008 Leinster SFC V Dublin: S Reynolds; D Finnegan, M Fanning, J Neary; J O'Brien, C McGuinness, R Finnegan (0-1); P Keenan (0-1), R Carroll (0-1); A Reid, M Stanfield, D Crilly (0-2, 1f); C Judge (0-1), A Hoey (0-3, 1f), S Lennon (0-1). Subs: A Page for Neary, J Murray (0-1) for Crilly, B White (0-1) for Reid, B Donnelly for Stanfield. Louth were left cursing their luck when they were paired with Mickey Harte's Tyrone in the first round of the qualifiers. It really was a bum deal. They were first out of the hat, which meant home advantage, and the powers-that-be listened to the manager's pleas and insisted on playing the game in Drogheda. Eamonn McEneaney was livid when the capacity at the O'Raghallaighs was set at just 4,500, insisting that officials had gone overboard on health and safety issues and pointing to the 14,000 who had witnessed the Reds beat Micko's Kildare at the same venue in 1991. The O'Neill County were no more pleased with the prospect of playing in Drogheda, with star man Sean Cavanagh quipping that it was akin to travelling to Accrington Stanley. If he wanted to play soccer, the 2005 Footballer of the Year should have gone to nearby United Park instead As it turned out, the decision not to play the match in either Parnell Park or Pairc Tailteann did little to raise Louth's game as they fell to a disappointing 1-17 to 1-9 defeat on Saturday July 19 - six weeks after the Dublin game. Goss and McGinnity were notable absentees again for the hosts as Tyrone routinely took their place in the second phase of the back-door competition. Darren Clarke's 18th-minute goal was Louth's only first-half score and they trailed by an alarming ten points at the break, 1-10 to 1-0. Enda McGinley got the Tyrone major. Louth outscored the winners by nine points to seven after the resumption but the match had been over as a meaningful contest before the sides turned around. When Shane Lennon blazed a penalty over the crossbar, it epitomised Louth's day - and, indeed, their season. Louth, 2008 Round One qualifier V Tyrone: S Reynolds; J Neary, M Fanning, J Carr; B McArdle, D Finnegan, R Finnegan; P Keenan, R Carroll; A Reid, A Hoey (0-1), D Reid; M Stanfield, S Lennon (0-3), D Clarke (1-3). Subs: B White (0-2) for Reid, C Judge for McArdle, J Murray for Carroll, A O'Brien for Finnegan. Tweet

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