Louth have ended their Leinster title famine – can they avoid the fate that usually follows?

Ger Brennan must overcome the terrible record of counties who have ended decades-long waits for provincial success

First title in 68 years: Louth celebrate beating Meath in the Leinster Football Championship final in Croke Park earlier in May. Photograph: Tom Maher/Inpho

Sat May 24 2025 - 06:00

In Louth this week, the job for Ger Brennan and his squad is to convince themselves that heaven is a hellhole. All around them, the county is shimmering. The people are lighter in themselves, giddy and bubbling still, the memory of a first Leinster title in 68 years so fresh and so clean. And yet somehow, the team has to convince itself that it didn’t really happen.

“I’d almost make an appeal to the Louth supporters and clubs to just go easy on the lads as they prepare for Monaghan,” Brennan told the Argus during the week. “If they can just maybe put a lid on talk of the Leinster Championship win and just wish guys well for the challenge ahead and keep pushing on and build on that confidence, which is obviously there now, having secured a provincial title. So that‘s probably one of the biggest challenges I’d say for the lads.

“They’re only with us a couple of times a week so it‘s all those other hours that you’re with family and friends, and in work, that people can leave the Leinster final alone and we’ll come back to that at the end of the year.”

If history is any guide, Brennan may as well be shouting at the tides out in Clogherhead. Nothing in the GAA beats the ending of a famine. In most counties, winning the province is the only realistic hope of capturing that feeling. Louth’s victory over Meath sent them straight in at number four on the all-time list of famines ending – only Westmeath (2004), Tipperary (2020) and Clare (1992) have won provincial crowns after a longer wait.

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What happens next though? A flick through the record books tells us it’s rarely anything good. In the history of the championship, there have been 28 occasions when a county has won a provincial title after a wait of at least 20 years. On 21 of those, the team lost its next game. Of the other seven, only one went on to win the All-Ireland – the mighty Roscommon team of 1943.

[ When Roscommon were kings of footballOpens in new window ]

Louth’s Leinster title was the 13th time in the past half-century that a county has ended a famine of more than 20 years. Of the other 12, only two won their next game – Kildare’s stunning win over Kerry in 1998 and Derry’s more rudimentary defeat of Clare in 2022. Armagh drew with Roscommon in 1977 and beat them in a replay. Otherwise, it has been the same story. Rinsed repeatedly.

There’s never been a single reason. Some of it is obvious enough – if you win your province after a few decades of yearning for it, the celebrations are generally wild and long and, most important of all, entirely necessary. When Monaghan beat Donegal in 2013 to win their first Ulster title in 25 years, nobody was worrying about an All-Ireland quarter-final against Tyrone. Not for a few days at least.

Monaghan celebrate in the dressingroom after beating Donegal to win their first Ulster title in 25 years, in 2013. Photograph: Donall Farmer/Inpho

“I’ll never forget how I felt on the Wednesday morning,” says Kieran Hughes, Monaghan’s top scorer in that Ulster final. “After two days on the beer, it was as if we’d lost by 40 points. I was out slurrying for farmers at the time and at one stage I was taking a break as the tank was being filled and I found myself sitting there in a complete daze. This is 10 days before an All-Ireland quarter-final.

“It‘s nearly the weekend by the time the hangover has passed through and your body is back to normal. By then, you’ve caught up on your sleep and you start to appreciate really what happened the previous week. But I remember being in a team meeting on the Sunday morning doing tactics on Tyrone and really only then clicking into it. That‘s a week gone at that stage.

“And meanwhile, the other team is fresh as a daisy, clawing at the fence to get at you. Tyrone were delighted to see us celebrating, I would have heard afterwards that they were passing around photos of us enjoying the win. We got plenty of verbals about it on the pitch as well. But you have to celebrate these things. Otherwise, what‘s the point?”

Louth were back training the Wednesday after the Leinster final. After the homecoming hit all the major towns well into the wee hours of Sunday night, there followed what the Louth And Proud podcast called “The Greatest Monday Club in History”. Nobody was hurrying them back on to the hamster wheel but Brennan did make the point that, “if you celebrate it for too long, you reduce your chances of success and progression in the All-Ireland series”.

[ ‘Why not us?’: Louth’s Sam Mulroy says belief was at heart of county’s march from lowest ebb to Leinster titleOpens in new window ]

Every team that ends a famine faces that same dilemma. The game is about glory and when you grab a rare slice of it for yourself, it has to be savoured. But at a certain point, you have to turn your attention to what comes next.

Everyone agrees that the reset is the thing. It has to be quick and it has to be ruthless. But it‘s incredibly difficult – if you’re a team making a breakthrough, winning your province is the only mountaintop you’ve been able to see for generations. Trying to suddenly convince yourself that it‘s base camp now rather than the summit is a new and unnatural feeling.

Before Louth, the most recent mega-famine to end was Tipperary‘s in 2020. Deep in the abnormal heart of the Covid winter, they at least didn’t have to worry about the after-effects of a few days on the lash since there were no pubs open. The usual run of dodging the public and the attendant hype wasn’t a problem either. But they suddenly had an All-Ireland semi-final to get ready for. Yikes.

“Hindsight is great,” says Conor Sweeney, Tipperary captain in that year of years. “We had a semi-final against Mayo and at the time, you’d like to think you were prepared. But subconsciously, the fact that we hadn’t won a Munster title in 85 years, the fact that we as a group of players had been trying to do it for so long, maybe there’s a part of you that relaxes a small bit when you’re there.

“You kind of go, ‘Well look, we’ve achieved the goal that we’ve always wanted to achieve and that we’ve been trying for so long to achieve.’ Subconsciously, you’re not as switched on for what‘s coming next as you should be.

Tipperary players celebrate at the final whistle after beating Cork in the football championship final at Pairc Ui Chaoimh in November 2020. Before Louth, the most recent mega-famine to end was Tipperary's that year. Photograph: Laszlo Geczo/Inpho

“We trained well in the two weeks leading up to the game and we felt we were as prepared as we could have been. We felt we had our homework done on the opposition. But then we conceded four goals in the first half. So clearly something wasn’t right.”

The key problem faced by every team in this situation is that it‘s all so unknowable. Louth players will have spent the past 10 days convincing themselves that they’ve done a proper reset but they’re not going to know how successful they’ve been until Monaghan are running at them in Newbridge this weekend.

“They will have a fair indication after the first 10, 15 minutes of the game,” says Sweeney. “Before that, you will not know, even though you will be telling yourself everything is fine. Part of me really hopes that they did over-celebrate – I follow a few of them online and I saw a few clips of them enjoying it and I was delighted to see it. You have to do that, you have to enjoy the fruits of all your hard work.

“But they can’t know until the ball is thrown in how their heads really are. I’d say physically, they’ll be fine. But it‘s the mental side of it. Can they park it and move forward now? I get the impression that they will – I definitely think they will come out of the group and they have a great opportunity there. But for this first game, they’re going to be wondering do they have it.”

That‘s the burden of success, especially long-awaited success. From the moment you climb the steps and lift the cup, you’re playing catch-up. Nobody’s knock is getting intense physio the next day. Nobody’s expecting the analysis team to sit up half the night coding the next opposition. Above all else, there’s a mental hurdle to be jumped that wasn’t there before.

“When Tyrone beat us in the Ulster final in 2010,” says Hughes, “I have a clear memory of sitting on the pitch with Colin Walshe and watching Brian Dooher lift the Anglo-Celt. Tyrone had won it so often by that stage that he lifted it with one hand and basically got the speech over and done with as quickly as possible. And me and Walshey were there going, ‘What would we not do to be up there?’ Three years later, we were and it was fantastic.

“But once you’ve done it, now you have to tell yourself that you’re moving on to the next thing. And even just having to do that is a drain on your mental energy. Put it this way – Louth wouldn’t have had to spend one minute before the Leinster final convincing themselves they were in the right mental place for it. But they definitely would have had to do it in the past week. That‘s all energy-draining.”

Nothing beats ending a famine. Sometimes, though, it ends up beating you. If Louth can avoid that fate this weekend, it will be an achievement to rank alongside the Leinster title itself.