St Marys Ardee gave another commendable showing in the 2007 Louth SFC but once again it wasn't quite enough as the Deesiders failed to advance beyond the group stage of the premier knockout competition. Despite impressive wins over the Brides and the Joes, the Marys were edged out by a last-gasp Blues point in their final group match. Young forward Robert Leavy reflects on an unfulfilling season. Even though the two finalists came from the other section, Group A was the most competitive of the two groups devised for the 2007 Louth senior football championship. In this section, it was always going to be a dogfight right to the death with defending champions St Josephs, their predecessors Mattock Rangers, perennial challengers Newtown Blues, success-starved St Marys, criminally under-rated St Brides and 2006 surprise packets Naomh Mairtin all vying for three places in the knockout stage. Clearly, nothing was going to be gained easily in this group. The fact that holders St Josephs finished bottom and ended up being relegated to intermediate level speaks for itself. The Brides came top and advanced to a semi-final. Mattock and the Blues squeezed into the quarter-final spots, leaving the Mairtins and the Marys in limbo. It was tough luck on the Ardee club, who won two of their opening three games and sat joint top of the table at that stage with the business end of the competition well in sight. But, amid a hectic scramble for the coveted knockout berths, the town side lost successive games at Castlebellingham in the space of eight days in mid-to-late August - and that left their Joe Ward Cup hopes up in smoke for another year. The final group game was against the Blues at The Grove on Sunday August 26. This was a winner-takes-all clash, with a quarter-final place guaranteed to the victors. Having turned around leading by 1-4 to 0-5 at the break, the Marys were rocked when corner back Donal Matthews got a second yellow card nine minutes after the restart. Ardee held its breath as three Niall Sharkey points had them one ahead with two minutes to play but all was lost when Colm Judge knocked over a late leveller and Hugh McGinn denied the Marys a play-off with an injury-time winner. The Marys had bossed the opening 25 minutes in particular, conceding just a point, but the sending off unsettled them and they were left gutted as first a quarter-final place and then a play-off were snatched from before their eyes right at the death. The St Marys team pipped by Newtown Blues at Castlebellingham was: Peter Duffy; Donal Matthews, Paul Malone, Hugh Diamond; Mark Gorman, Brian Keenan, Alan McKenny; Robbie Keenan, Ronan Carroll; Alan Balfe, Darren Clarke (0-1), Robbie Leavy; Shane McCoy, Alan Doherty (0-1), Niall Sharkey (0-7). Subs: Niall Carroll, Brian McCoy, Eoin McCartney. Looking back, the man who wore the No.12 shirt in that match admits: "It was very disappointing. When we saw the teams in the group, we set a target of qualifying for a quarter-final at least. After the Joes game, we knew exactly what we had to do but it didn't happen." The game Robbie refers to is a thumping 1-18 to 0-10 demolition of the defending champions at the Clans on Saturday July 28, a result which set the Deesiders up for qualification. That match had been played a full three months after the 1-13 to 2-8 Round Two victory over the Brides in Louth village on Saturday April 28, but the winners showed no ill effects from the lack of championship activity and rose to the occasion to record back-to-back SFC successes. The Marys had lost their championship opener to Mattock (3-11 to 1-11 on Sunday April 22) but now found themselves back on track. However, they lost to a rejuvenated Naomh Mairtin side at The Grove (1-16 to 1-13 on August 19) and their dreams evaporated at the same venue seven days later. All the games had been predictably close, but the Marys lost more than they won and could have no complaints. "In the Naomh Mairtin game, we were ahead at half time but didn't kill them off," says Robert. "They were coming off the back of beating Collon and they had all the momentum once they got their goal. "We had played the Blues in 2006 as well and also lost by a point. We know that on the day any game between the Marys and the Blues can go either way because there's nothing between us. But to lose it with the very last kick of the game was very frustrating. "Even though we were well beaten in the end, there was also a stage in the Collon game where we could have beaten them but we didn't put them away. We grew in confidence after the two wins but it just wasn't to be and that's been the story of the last couple of years for the Marys." Why are the Marys failing to make a major impact? Is it due to a lack of self-belief in the team, or more perhaps to do with the overall strength of football in the Wee County these days? "Football in the county is definitely improving," Robbie says. "There is no such thing as a championship game where you'll go out and have it easy. You only have to look at what happened to the Joes this year to see that. I know the Marys are from a big town and people expect more from us because of that, but small villages like Collon and Knockbridge are nearly the hardest to play against. They really enjoy bringing the big teams down. "I don't think we're lacking confidence," he continues. "In fact, we're confident in our own game and we know that there aren't many teams that could live with us on our day. We tend to let teams back into it. There are very few games where we score less than 12-15 points, but we need to start killing teams off. We only got 1-8 against the Blues this year. We have some of the best forwards in the county. Darren [Clarke] and Niall [Sharkey] are worth five points each, so if the rest of us chip in with a few we should be scoring 15 or 16 points in every game." Alan Doherty and Brian Keenan are the only two survivors from the 1995 SFC-winning side. The Marys team has even altered radically since the 2003 county final against the Pats, with a strong influx of fresh blood. Now this new-look side wants to put itself on the Louth GAA map by winning the Joe Ward. "We know we have the potential if we put the hard work in," Robbie Leavy insists. "The belief is there. We just have to pick ourselves up. Every team in the senior championship is capable of winning it and we're no different. We have the team so now it's a matter of pushing hard. If we win one, you could be looking at two or three. Once you're in the habit of winning championship games, you go in with extra confidence." Three local men took charge of the team in '07. Jim Clifford returned as manager and he had 1995 captain Brendan Kerin and Alan Keenan as his selectors. For Robbie, it was his third championship campaign and his third different management team, so he's hoping the lads are kept on for the sake of stability - not to mention the fact that he has the utmost faith in their ability: "I think they could do big things with this team if they were given a couple of years. The players have every confidence in the management, and they have every confidence in us. "Sometimes people seem to sense that the Marys are there for the taking but, if we got our act together, people's perceptions of us would change very quickly. "It's not easy for Ardee players to sit back and watch Collon winning championships. Personally, I've a couple of cousins on the Mattock team [Shane and Christy Grimes] and, as much as I like to see them do well, I'd much prefer if it was us!" Runner-up in three county minor semi-finals, Robbie represented Louth at U21 level in 2006 but (even though he was on the squad) missed out this year as his training for a career in An Garda Siochana took precedence. He had the rare honour of playing for the Marys in the same line-out as his father Mark for a couple of seasons and hopes to one day remove his grandfather Pat's distinction of being the only member of the Leavy household with a Joe Ward medal. Regarding the prospect of perhaps featuring for the Wee County at senior grade one day, the Marys attacker is remaining level-headed: "I'm just going to knuckle down and concentrate on playing as well as I can with the club. If I deserve a call-up, I'm sure I'll get it. The county management team - who I've worked with at U21 level - are very fair and they give everybody an equal chance. He concludes: "Nobody gets overlooked, so I'll just concentrate on playing football and keep my mouth shut." Memories of '95 When Brendan Kerin captained St Marys to the Louth senior football championship in 1995, it signalled the end of an embarrassing 20-year famine for the Deesiders. Wee County 2007 correspondent Gerry Robinson was practically living in Ardee at the time so he mingled with the locals as the Joe Ward Cup was welcomed into their midst for the tenth time. Here is his testimony: A combination of the passing of time and the inordinate amount of alcohol consumed that night has combined to dull my memories of St Marys' most recent Louth SFC success. Because I still have the match programme in my possession, I know that the date of the county final was September 10 1995. However, I didn't need to consult the programme to discover that the final score in the '95 county decider was 1-14 to 0-7 in favour of the Marys. It's one of those random pieces of trivia that remains embedded in my subconscious for some reason. I'll never know why. The match itself took place in Cluskey Park, Dromiskin and the opposition was provided by those upstarts from Lordship, St Patricks, who had shocked defending champions Stabannon in their semi-final and were appearing in their first-ever senior final. Ardee went in as favourites and they justified this tag with a competent display over the hour. They edged the first half by a few points (0-7 to 0-4) but totally overwhelmed their opponents in the second half to cross the winning line with plenty to spare. The second half score of 1-7 to 0-3 was as comprehensive as one could ask for. Alan Doherty got 1-8 of the Marys tally on the day and finished the year as top scorer in the SFC with a grand total of 3-33. He was a deserving recipient of the Man of the Match award on county final day but many Marys supporters felt that the man on the other wing - Eddie Gray - had been hard done by. Eddie was a great servant to his local club and very much an unsung hero. He produced one of the best displays of his life in the 1995 county final, working tirelessly around the middle third and almost single-handedly running the Pats into the ground. Veteran county man Ken Rooney was a model of consistency at left half back and young Lee Smith shone in the centre back berth. With a no-nonsense full back line of Tommy Kirk, Brian Scott and Pat Callan in front of him, Dessie Woods had little to trouble him between the sticks. The midfield pairing of Gidger (is that how you spell it?) AKA Alan Rooney and Brendan Kerin exerted more than a modicum of influence and even knocked over three points between them. On the edge of the square, Mickey Rooney was a robust but under-rated influence. Strong, deceptively skilful and imbued with tremendous determination, he contributed much to this championship-winning side. Back in those days, the SFC was still a knock-out affair. A glance at the programme reminds me that the Marys eliminated St Fechins (1-14 to 0-6 - almost exactly the same score as the final) in the first round at Dunleer on July 8 and followed up with a super 2-8 to 0-12 quarter-final victory over bogey team Cooley Kickhams at Dowdallshill. It took two games at Knockbridge to see off St Josephs (who would collect their first SFC the following year). On August 13, it finished St Marys 0-13, St Josephs 2-7 but six days later Mickey Rooney's goal guaranteed the boys in blue a 1-11 to 0-9 replay success to qualify them for the final. I was actually at one of those semi-finals but, pitifully, I can't remember clearly whether it was the draw or the replay. I do know I had great difficulty getting my temperamental Nissan Micra out of a field afterwards. I drove the same wee white beast - which I bought from a lad in Cooley who couldn't afford to pay the import duty - to Dromiskin on the second Sunday of September '95 to see could the Marys annex the SFC for the first time in 20 years. There was massive hype around the match and this brought its own kind of pressure but Declan Smyth's team coped well with the occasion. The Marys had lost three finals since their 1975 replay victory over Cooley in Drogheda (twice to the Kickhams and also the 1993 final to Clan na Gael) so - on the line - selectors and past players Michael McDonald, Sean Walsh and Gabriel McKenny were keen to ensure that there would be no repeat. Losing a second county final in three years would indeed have been a bitter pill. It didn't come to that as the players put in a performance befitting a county final - unspectacular but ruthless and efficient. I remember very little about the game itself except that the Pats put up a better battle than the final score suggests and the Marys played with a level of conviction that they've rarely reproduced since. There was a vast outpouring of emotion when John Kelleher from Clogherhead blasted the final whistle and a blue pitch invasion ensued. I didn't participate as I was planning a quick exit and an early start in the pubs back in Ardee. But I did take in Brendan Kerin's post-match speech and I specifically remember his heartfelt promise that the Marys would never have to wait 20 years for a senior championship again. That was twelve years ago now, so perhaps they'll still come good on that one. Anyway, I took the slow happy-funeral journey back into town and disposed of the car in Slieve Breagh. Then it was down into the belly of the celebrations without so much as a crumb to eat. On nights like this, the sole objective was to get drunk and be merry. Food was just an obstacle; an inconvenience; a distraction. Besides, you can eat Guinness, kind of. I was in Brian Muldoon's pub on the corner when Dotsy was carrying Joe Ward around and everybody wanted to take pictures. I posed for a few but then realised it wasn't me they were after. Ego shattered, I returned to the bar for another snakebite (remember them? half lager, half cider). I'm sure it was a great night's craic judging by the outrageously sore head I had the following morning. Hangovers didn't seem quite so dangerous back in those days so it was all worth it. In the pubs, bars and niteclubs of Ardee, the match and the entire season were dissected and analysed in ridiculous detail by all and sundry - including myself. However, I cannot recall a single word anybody uttered - including myself. September 10, 1995 in Ardee was an unforgettable day and a forgettable night. Tweet

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