Louth’s remarkable run to the All-Ireland SFC semi-final is something Conor Grimes could only have dreamed about a few years ago.

Facing Mayo at a sold-out Croke Park for a place in the All-Ireland final is a far cry from playing in the lower echelons of the Allianz League, the long-serving Glen Emmets forward admits.  

"The majority of my career was spent in Divisions 3 and 4 so I absolutely appreciate every day training with this panel in great facilities at Darver and operating at the level we are operating at," Grimes said in an interview with RTÉ.

"We remember a lot of dark days before Mickey (Harte) and Gavin (Devlin) came in.

"There were games with 50 people watching us. I was looking back at some footage and you could hear a dog barking in one of the games so small was the crowd. And now we are selling out Croke Park so it is phenomenal where we have come from in a short space of time."

He added: "For years, we didn’t always have our best players on pitch. We have two League of Ireland soccer clubs in this county and we didn’t always get the best players. But we had no problem with that when Mickey and Gavin came.

"Ger (Brennan) brought us to that elusive Leinster title (last year) and we were on a real roll. Gavin had also worked with our underage set-up and from there he has ensured that the enthusiasm keeps rolling for us."

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