Even though it was a transition year for Louth's hurlers, the Wee County stickmen didn't disgrace themselves by any means. They were unlucky to miss out on a NHL Division Three final spot and also came tantalisingly close to reaching the Leinster JHC final, only to be denied by a late Meath scoring burst. Gerry Robinson caught up with team manager Joe Power to discuss the events of 2003. Louth hurling manager Joe Power made the national headlines in 2003 when he quite rightly reacted angrily to insensitive Leinster Council recommendations that his Wee County senior hurling team should be disbanded. The Tipperary native's response to those outrageous suggestions was 100% justified considering how much energy is invested into hurling in the county and the passion he has for the game. If Irish folklore is to be believed (and who would doubt it for a minute?), then Cuchulainn was the first hurler and the game was invented in Louth, on the Cooley Mountains. Surely that's a tradition worth defending! Too few people appreciate the sheer scale of effort invested in Wee County hurling every year. And it could be argued that the commitment of those who don the county jersey surpasses that of their counterparts in the more traditional counties. After all, these lads make enormous sacrifices in return for very little. They know they won't be playing to a packed house in Croke Park on Leinster final just as surely as they know they won't be featuring on The Sunday Game any time soon. Their motives are beyond question; their commitment exemplary. Two-thousand-and-three was no different than any other year in this respect. All concerned invested a massive effort but silverware wasn't forthcoming as Lady Fortune refused to smile on Louth in either league or championship. Joe Power's new-look team could quite easily have reached the final of either competition, but alas it wasn't to be. The manager reflects: "We have to bear in mind that it was a transition year for Louth hurling first and foremost. A number of new players came onto the team and we have to give them time to adapt. For example, we brought in a lot of lads from Pearse Og, who in 2002 won the county championship for the first time in their 23-year history. Because these lads were new to the panel and to the intercounty scene, they didn't blend in straight away. But that will come with time and I've no doubt the Louth hurling team will be a lot better balanced next year. "Still, we have to look at things realistically and honestly and admit that third in the national league just wasn't good enough and losing to Meath in the junior championship - a game we could and should have won - was devastating. But we've some good hurlers coming through and, on the whole, things are very encouraging. Once this crop of players get another year or two of intercounty hurling under their belts they'll be a lot stronger." The 2003 season ended in heartbreaking fashion when the Wee County stickmen fell to a sickening 2-13 to 4-10 defeat to bogey team Meath in a Leinster junior championship semi-final on Wednesday July 9th. Louth played some super stuff in that game and were four points clear with three minutes to play. One could have forgiven them for having one eye on the final at that late stage but, incredibly, the Royal County came with a late surge of 1-4 in the dying minutes to frustrate their neighbours for the umpteenth time in recent memory! Meath have been Louth's tormentors-in-chief in the provincial JHC, but this defeat was probably the most disappointing of all as the reds had appeared to be home and hosed before fatally taking their eye off the ball. It was a similar story in the national hurling league, where only scoring difference deprived Louth of a place in the Division Three decider. Louth's record in the league in 2003 was an impressive five wins and two defeats from seven outings. They beat Cavan, Fermanagh, Tyrone, Sligo and Armagh but slipped up against Monaghan and Mayo. The Wee County played neighbours Armagh in their final Phase Two fixture at Keady on April 27th, where a magnificent second-half showing (including four goals) fired them to a 5-8 to 1-16 victory. However, this wasn't enough to book a place in the division final as Sligo pipped Joe Power's men on scoring average. Ironically, Louth had actually beaten the Yeats County when the teams clashed at Termonfeckin! Unfortunately, their scoring difference had taken a bit of a hammering on Sunday April 13th when they suffered a heavy defeat (3-12 to 2-3) to table-toppers Mayo in Ballinrobe and an unexpected earlier round defeat to Monaghan (suffered in Phase One of the new-look competition) also came back to haunt them. In general, though, Louth gave a decent account of themselves over the campaign, especially considering that they were blooding a lot of new players and were hampered all year by injuries, suspensions and the unavailability of key men. Louth qualified for the second stage of the league by winning three of their four Division 3B outings. They beat Cavan by 16 points, Fermanagh by ten, and Tyrone by ten. All in all, their form was good and there are a lot of positives to be taken from the year's efforts. Joe Power agrees: "It's all positive. We often had up to 30 lads out training in the sleet and the muck on Monday nights in January. That's some commitment and you have to give the players a great deal of credit because they're certainly not doing it for themselves. They're prepared to pull on that Louth jersey and give 100% even though they realise they might not have any major medals to show for it at the end of the year." Of course, Joe knows a thing or two about commitment himself. The Tipperary native has been eating, sleeping and drinking Louth hurling for the past five years - and his affiliation to the county team goes back way before that! The personal sacrifices he has been making are on a par with those made by high-profile managers in the more traditional counties. From January 6th 2003 right through until the Meath game on July 9th, not a single day passed that he didn't spend up to three hours working on team preparations in one capacity or another. '03 was Joe's second year in charge of the team and he spent three years as assistant manager before that (a position currently held by Tony Melia). That's a five-year unbroken association with the county's first team since Joe and John Kennedy took it upon themselves to introduce a more professional approach to Louth hurling. "The template I've been working off is very simple," Joe explains. "I start the training regime in January for ten weeks and that runs into the national league which starts in early March. We usually have seven or eight games over a ten-week period and then there's the junior championship, which unfortunately has only been one game for us for the past few years! "The way the hurling season has been condensed, we've put a revised training system in place, whereby we focus on a four-month campaign rather than a year-long one and I find it's a lot easier to convince the lads to give a commitment to that. There was a bit of a lull before the championship in July and we took the lads back in for three or four weeks before the Meath game." Once again it was a one-game campaign, but it could have been different. With time almost up Louth seemed to have the Royals where they wanted them. In a flash, however, Meath turned the game on its head. What happened? Where did it all go wrong? The manager isn't afraid to shoulder responsibility. He concedes: "I probably allowed myself to relax a bit with three minutes left. It's a dangerous thing to do, but maybe I thought we were there, that we had done enough. We were ahead by four points with a few minutes left and I couldn't really see them coming back. It was a classic case of snatching defeat from the jaws of victory! "They had one excellent forward and he made the difference in the end. It was the biggest disappointment since I took over the team, to be honest. "Looking back, I should have moved quicker on the line. I think that's where the game was lost. The obvious move would have been to bring in two pairs of fresh legs to shore things up for the last ten minutes, but we were caught out and paid the price. On reflection, if we'd made those switches we could have done it. "It wasn't as if we didn't have the stuff on the line. I had some lads with real quality and could have thrown them in. Quality-wise, they were as good as what we had on the field, but they were fresher. We should have acted quicker and I'd say that's where the game was lost." Such honesty from a manager is refreshing to hear and typifies a man fiercely loyal to his players. As far as Joe is concerned, the buck stops with him, and he's not one bit afraid of taking the rap. What are Joe's views on the team's efforts in the league? "The top two teams in Division Three went through to the final and we finished joint-second on the same points as Sligo but they had a better scoring difference. It was disappointing and a lot of it could be traced back to the earlier defeat to Monaghan. We usually have a very good record against them, but they got the better of us this time around. "That was our third game and we had introduced a number of new faces and were struggling for a settled team at the time. Once we dropped those points it left us playing catch-up for the rest of the league ... we almost got there in the end but just missed out. "Looking at it from a positive point of view, Louth hurlers are definitely making progress. You can see this if you look at our results against Armagh. They used to beat us every time, but we've beaten them three years in a row now so the quality is improving. "What we need most is more clubs in the county and to this end we expect Collon and Termonfeckin to put out senior teams in the next couple of years. We're a bit limited at the moment drawing the entire county team from four clubs. You always have a few really good players on every team, so if we had six or seven senior clubs to pick from, it would be easier to get a strong panel of 24 together. "People might laugh at me for citing Offaly as an example, but when they took off in the '80s they only had eight senior clubs to pick from and look at the progress they've made! If we had more clubs, we could realistically aspire to as least get on par with counties like Wicklow, Carlow and Kildare. With the right structures in place and a common belief, there's no reason why Louth hurling can't compete at a higher level." Tweet

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