John Sands was centre half forward on the Louth junior team in 2003. In an interview with Gerry Robinson, the gifted Geraldines clubman reflects on a campaign that was at once disappointing but well worth the effort. On the Wednesday evening of May 14th, Louth's juniors travelled to Wexford Park to face the Model County in the first round of the 2003 Leinster JFC. A two-point defeat (2-8 to 1-9) was to be their lot and the Wee County's interest in the junior competition ended before it had really begun. However, there were extenuating circumstances, unseen factors that prevented John Byrne's team from performing in the opening half. The players had to endure an arduous five-hour trek to Wexford venue and barely had time to warm up before the ball was thrown in. Against such a backdrop, defeat was hardly a major surprise. After trailing by 1-3 to 0-1 at the break (Lannleire's Eoghan Farrelly was the only Louth man to register before the interval), the Wee County came out firing on all cylinders after the break and a goal from wing forward John Moroney as well as five points from excellent midfielder Gerard Sheridan brought them right back into contention. They drew level but the home side finished stronger to progress to the next round. It certainly wasn't the result Louth wanted but they could draw a great deal of encouragement from their second-half showing - not to mention the sense of pride that goes hand in hand with pulling on a county shirt at any level. John Sands, who gave a typically industrious performance on the 40, admits that he found the whole exercise worthwhile and enjoyable: "Even though junior football might be frowned upon in a lot of circles, it's still a very high standard of football. Wexford had a lot of good players on their team and when you pit yourself against that calibre of opponent it can only be of benefit to your own game. It should improve us as club footballers and should also forward our claims for a place on the county senior panel." Does John see it as a shop window, a stepping-stone that could lead to a senior call-up? "If you perform well with the county juniors, you're showing that you can take a step up and you aren't that far away from the senior county team, which is the aim of every player in Louth," says the influential Geraldines clubman, who was part of the Wee County senior set-up under Paddy Clarke in 1999. Without doubt the biggest problem that afflicted the Louth juniors in '03 was the testing trip to Wexford. The team bus left Dundalk at 2.20 on match day afternoon ... the players disembarked from the bus at Wexford Park at 7.10 - only 20 minutes before the throw-in! Most of them had had to take half days from work to accommodate the trip and they didn't get home until after two the morning! A twelve-hour round trip for one hour of football ... the word 'farce' springs to mind... Afterwards, when I spoke to the team's manager John Byrne, he said: "The competition is treated with scant regard. At the end of the day, it's still an intercounty championship and the least it deserves is a weekend slot - or the game could have been played at a halfway house. Asking us to go down to Wexford on a Wednesday evening was unfair. "The ironic thing is that this was the best junior team we'd had in years. The lads were really interested in playing for their county and they were up for it. They put the effort in and deserved better." Strong words, indeed. And John Sands agrees with his manager, adding: "The whole day was a bit of a disaster. Like a lot of the other players involved, I work in Dublin - we were picked up at around 3.00 and were on the bus virtually right through to throw-in. We had less than 15 minutes to warm up in Wexford before the game. We were straight into it and it showed. "Little wonder we didn't perform in the first half! We didn't play any football at all until after the re-start and that's what cost us." Amazingly, in spite of all this, Louth could still have won the game. They only lost by two points in the heel of the hunt and could well have gone on to victory after a rousing second-half fightback brought them back on level terms. Sands recalls: "In the first half we had a strong wind against us and we tried to play the long ball but we had small, fast inside forwards and they had a big strong presence at the back, so that didn't work very well for us. There were also a lot of individual mistakes ... I think that mentally a lot of the lads were still on the bus for the first half! "But we really pulled ourselves together in the second half and were by far the better team. After we drew level it looked like we'd go on to win but we took our foot off the pedal and let them back into it." As has become almost customary with Louth teams over the years, the referee did the Wee County no favours at this crucial juncture, as John relates: "Just after we pulled level he gave an awful decision which let them back in front again. That didn't help our cause at all. However, I'd still admit that, even though we made a real go of it in the second half, Wexford were the best team over the hour. "The most disappointing aspect of the defeat was that we missed out on the chance of playing in Croke Park, which would have been a great experience. If we'd beaten Wexford, our next game was Wicklow at home and then our next game after that would've been in Croker. That's what we were aiming for. Everybody wants to play in Croke Park." While a lot of people tend to snobbishly look down their noses at junior football, this is certainly not the case with the players, as John confirms: "Absolutely not. All of us gave 100% and we were in it together as a team. The players who were there put the effort in and trained hard. "The previous year we did very little training for the game against Offaly but this time we had a few sessions and a couple of challenge games [against Dreadnots and Lannleire] so we went into the Wexford game quite well prepared. I suppose the whole competition could be better organised at Leinster Council level but from Louth's point of view we did much better in 2003 than we had in 2002 and that's significant." There's a lot of pride attached to the Louth junior jersey too. "Of course there is," John concurs. "All the players wanted to pull on that jersey. Everybody got on really well and we had a bit of craic. But once we pulled on the jersey, it was time to get stuck in. It's a serious business once you run onto the pitch." Presumably then, the players were somewhat crestfallen on the homeward journey from Wexford? "We were. A lot of things went wrong for us on the day. The conditions didn't suit our style of football but we took a lot of pride out of the second-half performance. Gerard Sheridan and Andrew Rogan had excellent games in midfield and those two in particular took the fight to Wexford in the second half. We were all over them." Two-thousand-and-three was John Sands' second year with the county juniors. The 25-year-old has won a number of honours with his club, Geraldines, including an intermediate championship, U14 All-Ireland Feile, Grogan Cup, two minor championships, two minor leagues and a Fr Ferran Cup. His most notable achievement was in 1995 when he famously collected a county MFC and IFC double. Louth's 2003 Leinster JFC team: Dermot McKenna (Oliver Plunketts); John Curran (Sean McDermotts), Ciaran Drumm (Clan Na Gael), Brendan Finlay (Sean McDermotts); Glen Finlay (Glyde Rangers), Darren Malone (Dreadnots), Kenneth Taaffe (Sean McDermotts); Gerard Sheridan (Glyde Rangers), Andrew Rogan (O'Raghallaighs); Eoghan Farrelly Lannleire), John Sands (Geraldines), John Moroney (Oliver Plunketts); Fergal McNally (St Fechins), JJ Corcoran (Geraldines), Clint Sweeney (Westerns). Subs: Damien Curran (Sean McDermotts), Ronan McElroy (Naomh Malachi), Ruairi Stewart (Geraldines), Shane Thornton (Geraldines), Niall Carroll (Geraldines), Mal McDonnell (O'Connells), Johnny Lynch (Westerns), Kevin Grogan (St Kevins), John Breen (St Nicholas). Tweet

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