It was an encouraging year for Louth's Development Squad teams, particularly for the U14s who did themselves and the county proud by winning the Tuft Cup with a superb 4-7 to 2-5 defeat of neighbours Meath in the final at Haggardstown on August 22. It wasn't a great year for Louth on the intercounty front, but the performances of the Development Squad teams shone a sharp ray of light upwards from the bottom of the abyss. The Wee County's future could yet be a bright one. Louth's fifth U14 Development squad team was notably impressive and their victory in the Tuft Cup was one of the highlights of the year. The management quartet of Eamonn McEneaney, Johnny McDonnell, Gerry Reynolds and Niall Lambert is charged with nurturing this crop of young talent through to minor level, as Louth's production line continues to gather momentum. Somewhere in the not-too-distant future, Louth may re-emerge as a genuine threat on the provincial and national stages. Certainly, if these players continue to perform with the same commitment, spirit and application they demonstrated in 2004, then the prospects are heartening. The 2004 Jimmy Tuft Cup was captured by Louth's U14s after an eight-point defeat of the Royal County at McGeough Park in Haggardstown on Sunday August 22. The winners started well with a Paul King goal and Dean Matthews added a second major after Meath had chipped back a couple of points. Captain David Moloney surged through from midfield to tag on two superb points and a third Louth goal from Matthews, supplementing a point from wing back Peter Flynn, put the winners firmly in command at the interval, 3-3 to 0-4. The Royals pulled back to within four points upon the resumption, but Louth rallied against the wind. Full forward Wayne Byrne added the fourth goal and points from Chris Dalton and Matthews stretched the lead to an insurmountable nine points. Matthews closed the scoring with two more points. It was a worthy win for the Wee County, who acquitted themselves tremendously well in the decider as well as in previous games against Meath, Down and Wicklow. On the same day, Louth were unlucky not to make it a double celebration when they lost the shield final to Meath by a point after extra time, 2-9 to 1-11. It was a brave effort by the Wee County, nonetheless, and they outscored their opponents by 1-8 to 0-2 during a powerful first-half display. The four team mentors got their provisional squad together as far back as January. Through their own involvements with juvenile club teams, all four had a fair idea of the talent available to them, but they were determined that nobody would be overlooked so they took a good look at every under 14 player in the county. The original objective was to pick a panel of 50 but there was a lot of talent on view, so a starting squad of 57 players was settled upon. It's important that there's flexibility in this respect as the purpose of development squads is to unearth and nurture talent, as opposed to alienating or leaving players out. Most of that original squad stuck at it and there were in excess of 50 young lads training on a regular basis. Then came the difficult task of whittling down to a hardcore panel of about 30 players for the immediate future and management chose what they deemed to be their strongest 34 players at that point in time. But it was stressed that no definitive decisions had been made and the door remained open to everybody. As Niall Lambert notes: "We made it clear that any of the players from the original 50 who were left out were by no means gone for good. Our intention was to maintain a watching brief and to bring players in and out of the panel as we saw fit. We told them that just because a player wasn't there at the moment, it didn't mean they wouldn't be there in the future. "A lot of them will definitely force their way back in. The door is open. If a lad plays out of his skin then he'll be involved. Nobody is on or off the panel forever … nobody should lose hope and nobody should become too comfortable. Even late in the year, we held a challenge game against Monaghan and some lads who hadn't been doing themselves justice played their ways back into it. When we take this team through at minor level in three years, we intend to have the strongest possible minor team representing Louth." The Tuft Cup is a four- or five-team competition run by the Geraldines club each year, played predominantly on the field in Haggardstown in honour of well-known former Louth footballer Jimmy Tuft. There were four teams involved in the competition in 2004 - Meath, Down, Wicklow and Louth - and it was run off on an initial round-robin basis, with the two top teams going on to contest the final. All in all, it was played over a four-five week period in July-August. Louth lost their first game to Down but then defeated Wicklow. They had to beat Meath in their last match to book a final spot and prevailed by a single point at Ardee. The final itself was played the following weekend on a wet and windy day in Haggardstown. Thus, Louth's "Reds" team defeated Meath on successive weekends to claim the spoils. Unfortunately, the "Whites" were edged out by a point in the Shield final. Prior to that, Louth had overcome Longford, Leitrim and Wicklow in the Leinster Special league. Later on in the year, the U14s also went to Kilberry to take part in the Kilberry tournament. They reached the final at the expense of Kildare, but were beaten therein by Meath (having missed a penalty and had a man sent off). Were Niall and his fellow selectors happy with how the team shaped up over the course of the year? "The team was better than we thought it might have been. Initially, we didn't know what to expect from them, but they improved a lot as the year went on. We started training in February, once a week under lights in Monasterboice and kept that up for eight or ten weeks. We then began to train on Sunday mornings on the Geraldines grounds. "It's very difficult to get grounds for training because, generally, clubs aren't prepared to have their pitches torn up. In that respect, we owe a huge dept of gratitude to Knockbridge, Monasterboice and the Geraldines for offering us the use of their facilities. "Also, Gerry Connor, secretary of the Minor Board, was excellent. He is very well organised and he provided us with excellent back-up. We were left wanting for nothing. Gerry's input is massive and is also vital." Of course, U14s don't drive cars (it's a crazy country but not quite THAT mad), so how were the logistics of getting the players together handled? "We told them from the start that there wasn't going to be a minibus. They were asked to make their own way to training and the response we got from them was excellent. Any money that was saved went back to the players in the form of gear bags and tracksuits, and the arrangement was in everybody's interest. We were very happy with the commitment the players showed." Louth's other Development Squad teams also performed admirably in 2004. With more of the same, the Wee County will be producing some exciting minor and senior teams in the foreseeable future. Niall Lambert concludes: "I would like to stress that we are operating a flexible panel. Because lads aren't on it at the moment, it doesn't mean they won't be in future. There will be plenty of opportunities for lads to stake their claim. We want everybody to maintain an active interest." Tweet

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