Louth GAA hope to make their schools best in class

By John Harrington

It’s been a stinging couple of weeks for Louth football as they relinquished their Leinster senior and U20 titles and a talented minor team also exited the Leinster championship at the semi-final stage.

But when you scratch beneath the surface there’s huge cause for optimism that the Wee County very much remains on an upward trajectory.

The quality of the U20 and minor teams this year testified to the fact that the county is now consistently producing top quality footballers at a greater rate now than arguably ever before, and this is no happy accident.

Increasing standards at development squad level have played a big part in this, but perhaps more telling again has been the emphasis that Louth GAA has placed on bringing quality coaching to secondary schools in the county.

Many of the men delivering the coaching have been current members of the county senior football team like Sam Mulroy, Ciaran Downey, Ryan Burns, Peter Lynch, Ciaran Burns, and Craig Lennon.

Ardee Community School were the pilot project in this regard and in the last five years have been transformed from a school that habitually competed in the ‘C’ grade in Leinster to one now actively challenging for silverware in the ‘A’ grade at multiple age-grades.

St. Mary’s College, Dundalk, De La Salle College, Dundalk, and St. Joseph’s in Drogheda have also been targeted in a similar way more recently, but perhaps the most interesting case-study of all is St. Oliver’s Community College in Drogheda, better known as 'The Ollies'.

They’re the second biggest secondary school in the country, but in recent years they haven’t punched anywhere near their weight in a Gaelic games sense with most of their teams competing at the lowest grades in Leinster competitions.

In a bid to rectify this, Louth GAA have collaborated with the school and local GAA club St. Nicholas GAC to fund the appointment of Louth footballer, Ciarán Downey, as the school’s first GAA Development Coach since the start of the 2025/2026 term.

It’s a novel initiative that also leverages the St. Nicholas GFC High Performance Centre, better known as The Sports Dome, which is located across the road from St. Oliver’s.

The facility includes four indoor pitches, a 97m by 68m playing and training surface, and a dedicated strength and conditioning area, and has become Downey’s HQ for the coaching programme he’s put in place for the school’s teams since last September.

It’s a project that won’t just benefit the school, but also St. Nicholas GAC, other feeder clubs in the town, and Louth GAA as a whole. From his very first day, Downey has rolled up his sleeves and gotten stuck in.

“Straight away you're going in and you're meeting these teachers for the first time who have been absolutely brilliant, I have to say,” Downey told GAA.ie.

“They're telling you their experiences for the last four or five years, even around trying to get lads to play and get teams together, trying to arrange gear and buses and all the things that you might not realise that go into it.

“The teachers are doing an awful lot on their own time even outside of school hours and it can be a challenge because budgets and funding can dry up very quickly.

“We had a good chat about where we could start and the initial priority was to get gear and equipment, so we got three brand new sets of jerseys, shorts and socks for each team, 40 footballs, bibs, cones, and tactics boards.

“We were very fortunate that the local Credit Union came on as a sponsor for the jerseys which was a huge help in terms of getting things off the ground.

“I know as a player myself when new gear comes in with Louth or with your club that when you look the part and you kind of feel the part, you kind of take it a little bit more serious then.

“We were really conscious that when the players are coming in to us we're doing things as high a level as possible, so the balls are pumped and the gear's ready to go.

The lads are getting the best so then we can maybe start to put a bit of pressure back on them, you know, that they have to show up.

“We’ve also put a big emphasis on how to make the coaching work best with all the teachers so they could split up their time and jump in where they were needed. So, if I’m taking four sessions a week I’ve two teachers with me for each age group.

“They’ve been very enthusiastic and that’s worked really well.”

The young footballers of St. Oliver’s are now getting the best of the best in terms of facilities, gear, and in return they’re expected to commit to the cause.

Training in the Sports Dome takes place at 7.30am before school starts, which might not seem too appetising a prosect for many a bleary-eyed teenager in the morning, but Downey has been delighted with the response he’s gotten.

“The lads, in fairness, have been brilliant.

“We've been getting a great response now and we’re seeing the impact of that now because from March time onwards the club action really gets going again and we've had some great feedback from the local clubs that the lads are with.

“They’ve been telling us that they're moving that bit better, they're a bit more confident.

“We've around 45 hours training time since September, between pitch and gym, so that in itself is a natural confidence booster, they've a bit more time spent on it. The feedback from the clubs has been brilliant, I have to say.

“It’s been a great help that we’re able to base ourselves in the Sports Dome because we don’t have to worry about the weather so training sessions always take place as schedule.

“It’s a state-of-the-art facility, it’s a bit short of the dome in Connacht, but it’s not a million miles off that and we’re very lucky to have that on our doorstep.

“It’s open to all clubs in Louth, you can rent it and it’s going to be a real hub for us as a county to keep the club action going. It’s brilliant for young kids to get them inside out of the wind and cold and the heavy pitches. You can work on skill stuff, you can really refine things so it’s been a serious asset.”

Downey is playing the long game in terms of this project, but he has already seen some short-term gains.

Two pupils who weren’t even playing club football at the start of the school year have since represented the St. Nicholas GAC senior team, and the standard of the school’s teams rose appreciably as the year progressed.

Year One was always about laying a foundation, and he feels like he and the school are now in a very good position to build on it over time.

“In any sport when you’re investing in your underage what you put in now you'll see the fruition of in five years' time hopefully,” he says.

“It's definitely not an overnight thing to this. Yes, there's been small wins, and stuff like that, but it's very much a three to five year outlook on things.

“And definitely now from when we go back in September boys know what's expected now, they nearly know the training patterns.

"We're planning on staying in touch with them over the summer, and hold an open session for them to do a skill session, or a gym session, so you just don't go off now for three months and are back to square one when I see them again in September.

“We're very much conscious that we're constantly going to grow it and build it across the year.”

Louth GAA’s decision to really target quality coaching in their secondary schools is a canny one for a number of reasons.

You have a guaranteed captive audience on a weekly basis and it’s a great method of talent identification in an age cohort where players can make big jumps in ability in a short period of time.

If your schools raise their level and start competing in ‘A’ competitions then then the players from those schools that make it on to county panels will be better equipped to be successful in that arena.

Quality coaching in schools also leads to a rising standard in the clubs that feed into them, and that could be especially impactful in Louth where there are 11 clubs between Dundalk and Drogheda but only two of them, one in each town, are in the senior grade.

If Gaelic football really started to blossom in the county’s two big towns, that could have a dramatic impact on the fortunes of the county’s teams at all grades.

The fact that this schools coaching drive is being spearheaded by current senior county players like Downey is another big plus.

It’s inspirational for the players to be trained by their sporting heroes and gives them an insight into the good habits and standards required to make it to the very highest level.

The coaching programmes they’re being introduced to are the same ones that are used in the county’s development squads, so that again makes it easier to make the leap to getting performing at that level.

If you closely examine any county that’s successful in either code you’ll usually find that they have a number of secondary schools competing at a high level who almost act like regional development squads.

Louth GAA have been clever enough to recognise the potential of putting a big emphasis on schools coaching, and it’ll be very interesting to see what sort of rewards they’ll reap in the medium to short-term.

“It sends out the message out that we're serious about what we're doing,” says Downey. “We want to raise the levels, we want to give lads good standards.

“It's not kind of this thing hoping we might get a good crop of players in a certain year out of nowhere.

“We're actively now trying our best to make the best situations we can for lads to develop and play good level football.

“The big thing for us even as a group of players with the Louth senior team is around that sustainable piece.

“It's about being sustainable year on year. That doesn't mean you're going to win Leinsters every year, or A grades at school level, it's not necessarily about that.

“Of course they are things you're going after, but it's not a case that, okay, we didn't win a Leinster this year, we’ll just fall away now.

“It's that we're constantly going after things, we're constantly trying to improve, and that's about being sustainable so that we're here in the next ten years still competing.”