‘That’s not a true reflection of Louth football’ – Donal McKenny keen to make Wee amends for 28-point Kerry rout

The Louth corner-back, bursting into midfield, was turned over by Dara Moynihan. Four punishing passes later, David Clifford was caressing the ball home for the first of five Kerry goals.

History repeats itself this Sunday when, for the second year running at precisely the same championship juncture, the bigwigs of Munster meet the bridesmaids of Leinster in Portlaoise.

But that is where the similarities appear to end. McKenny certainly hopes so, with Louth determined to prove last June’s humbling 5-24 to 0-11 defeat was the outlier.

The portents are vaguely promising. Louth lost last year’s Leinster final to Dublin by 21 points; for this year’s battling reprise, the margin was trimmed to four.

Based on that admittedly crude benchmark, keeping Kerry to single digits should not be beyond Louth. Here’s another reason for a Wee dollop of cautious optimism: where Mickey Harte’s charges narrowly lost their first two group fixtures in 2023, Ger Brennan has engineered a historic ten-point trimming of Meath and then deadlock in Monaghan where, in truth, the visitors blew a win that was there for the taking.

Not to worry: Louth are guaranteed a preliminary quarter-final at least. And (whisper it gently) a shock ambush of Kerry would see them top their group.

That was never on the cards last year, even before McKenny’s mistake. At the time, 23 minutes in, Kerry were already 0-11 to 0-2 ahead and cruising.

“Last year, look, we were going in to win the game,” he maintains. “But this year, we’re going in with a bit more structure, a bit more confidence and belief, and we’ll try to stay in the game, not let what happened last year affect us. Yeah, I suppose we’ve a better grounding going into the game this year.”

Not to labour the point, but why did it go so horribly wrong?

“I remember they got an early goal, in no small part my fault,” he says of that moment he was dispossessed. Conor Grimes had also flashed over a glorious goal chance with the game in its infancy.

But these are minor details in a big-picture massacre. “They just kicked on from there, just started swinging them over. We couldn’t seem to score at all, to be honest. We were getting up there but kept hitting wides, and their big players just really stepped up to the plate then.”

Thus, a season that had bristled with league and Leinster promise ended in a damp squib. It also signalled the end of the Harte era once the veteran boss decamped to Derry.

But lessons were absorbed by players and their new management.

“That’s the main learning for me anyway, just staying in the game,” says McKenny. “Like we did against Dublin [last month], going in a point up at half-time.”

Even amid managerial upheaval, the team “never lost momentum”. In the players’ minds, “I think we all knew that’s never going to happen again … we feel maybe that’s not a true reflection of Louth football.”

Twelve months on, they couldn’t ask for a better time to prove it.