Louth footballer Andy McDonnell pictured at the Leinster Senior Football Championship launch.
By Cian O'Connell
The Allianz Football League brought pain, injuries, and defeats for Louth, but Andy McDonnell is hopeful Pete McGrath's young outfit can respond in the Leinster Football Championship.
Sunday's game with Carlow promises to be a revealing encounter at O'Moore Park with the accomplished McDonnell highlighting the summer journeys enjoyed by Westmeath and Roscommon in recent years following disappointing spring campaigns.
"Just look at Roscommon last year, they had a very bad League performance, but won in Connacht," McDonnell states.
"I'm not saying we are going to win Leinster. It is going to be tough against Carlow, they have a lot of good players and they had a great Championship last year.
"They have a lot of players who we will have to keep tabs on them and hopefully we will get our match ups right."
Louth are keen to summon a gutsy display in Portlaoise against an improving Carlow team. "We didn't have the best of Leagues, Carlow are coming in on the back of gaining promotion from Division Four," McDonnell says. "They have only lost two matches this year, the two to Laois. It will probably be a very close match.
We had a lot of injuries. We got back to back promotions, but we nearly have a brand new panel this year. We have maybe 15 or 16 new lads on the panel. Some lads retired, a few lads defected from the panel, you then have a few with injuries.
"It has been tough, but it has been a good learning curve for the young lads. It hasn't been easy at times going training after losing three or four matches in a row.
"It has been tough, and while we have a small enough panel at the minute we feel we are getting stronger. Hopefully that will be seen against Carlow."
Andy McDonnell played for UCD in the 2017 Sigerson Cup.
McDonnell, who played in the 2017 Sigerson Cup final for a star studded UCD under John Divilly against St Mary's Belfast, relished being involved at that level.
"John Divilly was brilliant, this year I was watching on the internet, they had a great team, some brilliant players," McDonnell admits. "I played with the likes of Mick Fitzsimons, it was a joy to play with him, Jack McCaffrey, you learn off those boys.
"It was terrible to come up short because we scored two goals at the start. It was a great game, fair play to Mary's - for a small college they had a serious team with some great players.
"It was basically two county teams against each other. Unfortunately we were on the losing side, but it was great to play for the year. I did a Masters and that was me done with College. I did the Masters in Sports Management."
Following that course McDonnell has been busy in the Garda Training College in Templemore. McDonnell, though, remains eager to contribute for Louth, who didn't motor as smoothly as they would have liked in the Championship following promotions in 2016 and 2017.
"That is fair to say, I can only speak for last year, I was only there last year," McDonnell remarks. "We came in after having a great League. We were hammered by Armagh in the League and then went to Tipperary, not too many people thought we would beat Tipperary and we toppled them down there with a great second half performance.
"You give it your all at times for three or four months in a row and then to go back a few weeks later to do it again we just weren't able to do that.
"We just about got over the line against Wicklow and we were just flat. Against Meath we were there or thereabouts for 45 or 50 minutes, but in the last while they cut us open. They ended up scoring 27 or 28 points. It is hard to do it all year."
McDonnell is optimistic that Louth are primed for the challenges awaiting in Leinster starting against Carlow at O’Moore Park.
