After watching his side bump Meath into Division Three in 2012, Louth manager Peter Fitzpatrick declared that it “buried the Leinster final of 2010”.
Fitzpatrick, now the Louth chairman, was no doubt being sincere when making the statement in the immediate aftermath of a seismic win but, ultimately, the words didn’t carry as much truth as he wanted them to.
However, inflicting a nine-point defeat on Meath in Navan, their first win over them in League or Championship since 1989, to avoid relegation and send their greatest rivals tumbling out of Division Two, helped to offset some of the pain from the debacle of 21 months earlier, along with a bad beating in the 2011 qualifiers.
“It certainly didn’t make up for it,” insists Paddy Keenan, Louth’s only All Star who played at midfield that day.
“It was probably as much validation that you could beat them because I think in 2010 a lot of people were saying that if the game was replayed, Meath would have beaten us out the gate and we definitely didn’t feel that in 2010. We felt we were on a par and we could absolutely beat them and we should have beaten them the first day.
“Unfortunately when we played them in 2011 they did hammer us out the gate so, having that win there in 2012, you could fire back a wee bit or you were proving to yourself that you could beat them and you had that performance in the bag.
“It’s just a pity it didn’t happen on a Championship day. Unfortunately it didn’t make up for 2010 but it did give you that little bit of pride or bit of validation that you were at that level or that you could play at that level on a good day.”
It may not have been Championship but the ‘it was only the League’ line didn’t cut it in this instance given what was resting on the result. Having been humiliated on their home patch by their neighbours and relegated to the third tier, the fallout in Meath was considerable.
The county board moved against manager Seamus McEnaney straight away, proposing a vote of no confidence which a majority of delegates backed but not the two-thirds required to see him ousted.
Ultimately, he stepped down once that year’s Championship campaign was ended by a qualifier defeat to Laois.
With four rounds of League games to go, the counties’ renewal at Pairc Tailteann this Sunday doesn’t have quite the same cliffhanger feel to it as 11 years ago but it could well be season-defining for at least one of them with relegation from Division Two visiting much starker consequences now with a place in the All-Ireland SFC at stake.
“If you’re being cold and honest about it,” says Keenan, “we have Dublin in the last game and you’re not expecting to be beating Dublin if we’re all going to be honest about that so that leaves you with three games and you’d definitely need to win at least one [to stay up] but ideally you’d need to win two to make certain.
“You’re looking at Meath and Kildare as the more winnable of the remaining games.
“A loss for Meath brings them back into the mix so it’s an absolutely huge game.
“We’ve a lot going on within the county, off the field as well, the new stadium is starting to get work done on it and things like that.
“For me anyway, you don’t want to be building a new stadium, launching it hopefully next year and be stuck in Division Three and the B Championship. You want to be up in Division Two and progressing and playing in the proper Sam Maguire job, bringing the likes the Dubs or Derry or Cork or Meath to your ground.
“We’ve been long enough in Division Three and Division Four, you don’t want to be at that level when you’re trying to grow the game and trying to bring the next generation into a new stadium and all the rest.
“The League, to me, is probably more important than the Championship nearly this year to consolidate for the year and going into next year hopefully in Division Two with the new stadium coming on board so it’s a massive game.”
Keenan admits he would have revelled in the opportunity to play under current Louth boss Mickey Harte.
The St Patrick's man announced his retirement from inter-county football in 2014, long before Harte arrived on the scene two years ago, with the former Tyrone boss having since lifted the team from Division Four to Division Two.
They lost their opening two League games narrowly to Clare and Derry but a win over Limerick last Sunday gives them a fighting chance of staying up as they go to Navan on Sunday.
Keenan said: “I know from other lads, whether they’d stepped away a year or two beforehand, before Mickey came in, a lot of people around the county would have thought or would have expected that Mickey would be bringing some of those lads back in but, in fairness to him, he stuck to his guns and said, ‘Look, we’re taking the next generation of players in’.
“I would have questioned that myself at the time but maybe it was the right decision and it is looking like the right decision and I’d say a lot of those lads that did walk away a year or two years, three years before Mickey came in there are probably, in a way, kicking themselves.
“I’m sure they’d all love to have played under him, the same as myself, just to experience his insights and the professionalism and the level of coaching and all the rest.
Keenan added that the influence of Gavin Devlin, who was also Harte’s right-hand man in Tyrone, has been considerable.
“There’s the wild tough training which obviously any county team is doing but they seem very impressed with Gavin Devlin as well, very, very impressed as a coach on the training field.
“But you still need to get the results to keep Mickey and Gavin longer term. They’re the sort of characters, they want to be playing in the higher divisions and higher levels.
“If you get relegated, if you’re back into the B Championship and that, what’s their future? So we want to perform, as a county we want to perform as well for ourselves but to keep that continuity with Mickey and Gavin that they’ve built over the last couple of seasons.”
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