Ciarán Downey has big ambitions for Wee County
Ciaran Downey of Louth poses for a portrait during an Allianz National League media event at The Palace Demesne in Armagh. Photo by Ramsey Cardy/Sportsfile.
By John Harrington
Sometimes you have to take a moment to enjoy your surroundings to appreciate how far you’ve come.
Back in 2021, Ciarán Downey was part of a Louth football team plying its trade in the fourth Division of the Allianz Football League and very few people in the Wee County were looking towards the horizon with any degree of confidence that a brighter future beckoned.
Fast forward five years and they’re reigning Leinster champions and very much in the hunt for promotion to Division 1 of the Allianz Football League after impressive back-to-back wins over Tyrone and Cavan.
Such is the enthusiastic support for the team in the county now that tickets for Sunday’s crunch match with table-toppers Derry have been sold out for over a week and the atmosphere in DEFY Páirc Mhuire is set to be raucous.
Downey credits the vision and ambition of former Louth Chairperson Peter Fitzpatrick for getting the county moving in the right direction again.
He raised standards at all levels in the county and the appointment of Mickey Harte and Gavin Devlin as a senior team management double-act for the 2021 season was a shot of adrenalin that revived the county’s flagship team.
“Peter Fitzpatrick deserves an awful lot of credit, I don't know how many men would have been chasing Mickey Harte and been able to get him at the time in fairness,” says Downey.
“Peter would have had big aspirations for us in the county and he got him in and then the lads really started to get into the belly of the structures and improving the facilities and showing us how maybe to act as the Division 1 counties do.
“It was all new information to us as a group and we were sitting bottom in Division 4 at the time so we couldn't go any lower really so the only way was up from there.
“A few of us would be chatting about how far things have come over the last few years. There's some lads there 11/12 years and when Mickey and Gavin came in first, we're kind of counting from then.
“There's a bit of a project started and the amount of movement that has happened in five years in terms of facilities and maybe how the team's treated and how we act as players, it really is night and day.
“It's definitely built over the years. I suppose you reap what you sow.
“Five years ago, we were slowly building things, going after conditioning, nutrition, the facilities. It was a whole-picture approach. It wasn't just, we have a team here now.
“A lot of the boys you saw in Division Four, myself included, are the same boys that are trying to break into the top ten, top five teams in Ireland. It shows it can be done in a relatively short period of time. It has been incremental.
“You hit different milestones. Obviously, you first get up through the divisions. Then, from there, can you attack the championship and do better in the All-Ireland Series? We haven't hit every metric yet, by no means.
“We have a lot of work to do as a team and as a county, but we're getting there, steady I feel.”
Ciaran Downey of Louth with supporters after the Allianz Football League Division 2 match between Cavan and Louth at Kingspan Breffni in Cavan. Photo by Ben McShane/Sportsfile.
The Louth players themselves deserve huge credit for driving the team’s standards in the last six years.
Many people predicted that two years of progression under Harte would quickly go into reverse when he decided to step away after the 2023 campaign to manage the Derry footballers instead.
Instead this generation of Louth footballers ended the county’s 68-year wait for a Leinster senior championship with Ger Brennan in charge and look well equipped to raise their standards again with Gavin Devlin back in the county as manager rather than coach this time around.
Downey believes now that Harte’s decision to leave as manager actually accelerated the development of the team because the players felt they had a point to prove.
“It was felt around us that every time we got a win it was down to Mickey and Gavin,” recalls Downey.
“As players we were still learning our trade and improving and when he went we had to prove to ourselves that we could stand on our own two feet.
“We were forced into that. I don’t know if we would have landed as quick as we did if Mickey had stayed.”
The experience of being a Louth senior inter-county footballer is a very different one now than it was when Downey started his career in 2018.
Back then there was very little glamour or profile to the gig, whereas now they’re recognised wherever they go by a hugely enthusiastic public that has taken the team to their hearts.
“Oh, it definitely has changed and we'd be laughing about it,” says Downey.
“It was a bit mad over the last couple of years and it's normal now where you're seeing kids wearing Louth jerseys, we’d seeing men going around in Louth hats or you’re meeting people and they are stopping you and being genuine and they are mad to know how things are going and wishing you well
“It would have been all United jerseys and Drogheda and Dundalk jerseys - every other jersey bar Louth!
“I suppose we were under no illusions as a team that you need to follow success, you need to give them something to follow.
“You can't expect people to be paying hard-earned money every Saturday or Sunday to come and follow you and you may be not doing your business as well as you should be. We take a lot of that on as players and, yeah, the fans have been unbelievable.
“I think obviously even, the Leinster final last year, you've seen the level of support that came up the road. It's brilliant for us.”
Ciarán Downey of Louth celebrates after his side's victory in the Leinster GAA Football Senior Championship final match between Louth and Meath at Croke Park in Dublin. Photo by Piaras Ó Mídheach/Sportsfile.
As a county Louth look like they have now gotten most of their ducks impressively in a row.
Last year they won the Leinster U20 championship as well as the senior championship which is a testament to the rude health of their coaching and games development structures.
Their infrastructure is also moving in the right direction with their training facilities in Darver significantly upgraded and a new 14,000 seater stadium currently under construction in Dundalk.
The health of the game at post-primary schools level hasn’t been great in recent times but Downey himself is at the cutting edge of a Louth GAA initiative to address this.
He was recently appointed as a GAA Development Coach in St. Oliver’s Community School in Drogheda, the second biggest secondary school in Ireland, and the plan is to target other schools in Dundalk and Ardee in a similar way.
At all levels in the county it looks like there’s a great determination to ensure that the good times they are now enjoying are sustainable in the long term.
“We probably neglected things for 20-30 years but not through any fault or badness, people were trying,” says Downey.
“Then, when you get a bit of success and you get people on the same page it makes it a little bit easier and there’s definitely a clearer train of thought.
“We were probably a yo-yo county and when that’s the case it's very hard to build momentum.
“It's very hard to keep your structures in place when you're bouncing between the divisions and I suppose that sustainable piece is about each year now that there's lads coming in and they're really stepping up.”
Downey sees huge potential for Louth to get stronger and stronger in the coming years if the GAA can win the battle for hearts and minds in the county’s two big towns of Drogheda and Dundalk.
Those two urban areas have a combined total of 11 clubs, but only two of them play senior championship football, so there’s obvious room for improvement there.
“We always look at how Monaghan have done as a county,” says Downey. “We have more of a population than Monaghan have, but look how they maxed out and how they got the best out of their players and their playing pool.
“Maybe we're not up there with a Cork and a Dublin and maybe even a Mayo or Donegal with their populations, but we do feel we’ve two of the biggest towns in Ireland soe have an awful lot of scope.
“We’ve always had footballers in Louth. It was probably the surrounding factors that maybe let us down at times. There's definitely more there to grow, there's more to find.
“In our towns I believe there's more to be done, that we can actually get more out of the larger numbers. There's 60,000 people in Drogheda, there's 50,000 in Dundalk. We can definitely start to get in there a little bit more which I think we're en-route to.
“We feel that there is the players in Louth and there's more coming that we can compete at the top but we know it takes a lot of work, it takes a lot of effort and if it isn't in five years, we were going to keep this going for 10 and 15. So that is the plan.”
Ciaran Downey of Louth, left, and Paul Cassidy of Derry during an Allianz National League media event at The Palace Demesne in Armagh. Photo by Ramsey Cardy/Sportsfile.
Louth have travelled a long way in a short period of time but Downey sees no reason why they should pull a handbrake on their upward trajectory any time soon.
Winning the Delaney Cup last year for the first time since 1957 showed what you can achieve when you combine ambition and application, so why not now go win the Sam Maguire Cup in the not too distant future?
“I know Sam (Mulroy) got a bit of stick a few years ago for saying: ‘Why can’t we win an All-Ireland?’", says Downey.
"There was a long way to go from where we were to getting there but our goal isn’t just to be a Division Two team, we’re an ambitious group and we believe that we can mix it with anybody in Ireland.
“It’s about consistently getting there and taking the scalps when they come. I wouldn’t be ruling out us winning an All-Ireland in the next five-six years.”
