Darragh Ó Sé: Louth belong at this level - they’re not the underdogs they’ve been for most of our lives

You couldn’t be happier for Louth after they came through a battle like that on Sunday. Don’t be codding yourself that these are a crowd of little guys living on a wing and a prayer. You don’t beat a seasoned team like Monaghan with 14 men by accident. These are tough boys. Don’t worry about that.

I remember being at a wedding in Louth about 10 or 11 years ago. It was on Easter Sunday and Kerry were playing Tyrone in a league game the same day. Kerry were in relegation trouble at the time and it was all coming down to the last day, so myself and herself said we’d go and find a pub to watch it on TG4.

Now, Dundalk is well-known as a soccer town. That might be changing these days, in line with recent events and so on. But trust me, it was a soccer town then. And whatever little time anybody had for the Louth footballers, in any pub we went into, they had even less for the Kerry and Tyrone footballers.

So we drove around Dundalk, trying to find a pub that had it on. When we eventually found one, it was a fairly rough-looking joint. I’ve been all over the world and I kind of like finding myself in places that aren’t necessarily the most comfortable. But the pair of us were in our wedding finery and we were sticking out a mile.

A couple of the lads above at the bar turned around to us. They had skull tattoos. I don’t mean pictures of skulls tattooed on them – I mean actual tattoos inked on their skulls. I was looking at them thinking, “Jesus, it must have been a fair level of pain to get that done”. I was about to turn around and go, “We should probably try looking somewhere else …” but before I knew it, my wife breezed past me and sat down and started watching the match.

We had a grand time. The lads were great and the game ended in a draw. Kerry avoided relegation and we went away on to the wedding. But I always remembered it when I thought about Louth football back then. I hope the place was hopping last Sunday.

Their win over Monaghan was the result of the weekend, hands down. They played like a team that knew everything had been leading to this. All the older lads who had taken beatings down the years and played in Division Four. All the younger lads who have come through successful underage teams. All of them pulling in the one direction, believing it was possible.

The scene at the end told you everything you needed to know about them. When the hooter went, they all ran in different directions, mad and free. When you see teams who have been doing this for a while win a quarter-final, or even a semi-final, it often feels like there’s something a bit choreographed about how they manage the few minutes afterwards. They go and wave at the supporters, they get a photograph with the girlfriend leaning out over the barrier, they make a show out of already being in reset mode.

There was none of that with Louth. They ran back-mad around the place and immediately went looking for each other. They had eyes for nobody but the other players and management and backroom staff. If you knew nothing about football or nothing about sport, you’d be able to tell within 20 seconds that this is a crowd of people who have a bond. There’s complete buy-in there.

That will carry you a long way. Louth came into that game with a plan. But the plan was punctured within six minutes of the throw-in when Seán Callaghan got sent off. You would think a team that hasn’t been to an All-Ireland semi-final since 1957 would be put off the road altogether by that, but they decided it was just a speed bump.

They had already lost one player, so it had to be one of those days where nobody else dropped their level. No matter how tired or sore they were, they couldn’t afford to carry another player. It takes a huge sense of shared purpose to pull that off. You don’t do that if you’ve just come together this year. You do that through the accumulation of experience, building your way along the journey together.

Look what they got out of their subs. Ciarán Byrne and Tadhg McDonnell are two very different players, but Byrne’s strength and size were just as crucial to the win as McDonnell’s speed and score-taking. There’s two fellas who must be thinking they should be starting and yet they’re happy to come in and make their contribution.

Every bit of it was needed. My favourite bit was Sam Mulroy’s pickup near the end with his left leg. Put yourself in Mulroy’s position. The big star on the team, the marquee man, probably annoyed at himself for missing the two-point free a while earlier. He spent all day running himself to a standstill – at one point, not long before, he caught a ball in his own square. Now he was up on the Monaghan endline with two defenders closing in on him.

Not alone that, but the noise in the stadium was getting louder and louder. The Dublin supporters were rolling in and getting rowdy. Time was running out and Mulroy had to be wrecked. But still, he had the composure to flick the ball up to himself on the move with his wrong foot and work it back out for a score.

That tells you a lot about him and about where Louth see themselves. They’re not the underdogs they’ve been for most of our lives. They’re a team of lads who have progressed every year since Devlin started with them in Division Four alongside Mickey Harte. They couldn’t care less about adversity or history or things going wrong. They just do their thing and it’s working.

I’d say if I went back to Dundalk these days, I’d have no trouble finding a pub to put on a league match. Louth are in the All-Ireland semi-final and they belong there.

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