At some point early in his masterful metamorphosis of Louth football, Mickey Harte chose Sam Mulroy as his team captain. If Harte, the three-time All-Ireland winning manager with Tyrone, had any hope of success he needed absolute belief and buy-in from his players.
He chose wisely. From the opening conversation with Mulroy it’s evidently clear he lives and breathes Louth football, with complete belief to match. Something he aptly brings to his style of forward play too.
It wasn’t necessarily always this way, the arrival of Harte and his former Tyrone cohort Gavin Devlin reinvigorating all that zeal to a point of no return.
“People probably looked at Louth and I suppose it’s easy to say, ‘there’s nothing going on there’ or ‘they don’t have any ambition’,” Mulroy says.
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“Peter Fitzpatrick [Louth chairman], he enticed Mickey, and maybe he sold him a bit of a dream. Maybe it was something different for Mickey as well, maybe he saw it as a challenge. He had done it at the top and maybe he wanted something from a different perspective. I suppose it was disbelief at the start.
“I think he’s just a really good operator, just loves football. I think he was telling us the other day that he’s been involved in the last 30-odd championships straight. It’s absolutely incredible. He’s an unbelievable man and he’ll always be thanked in Louth for what he’s done over the last number of years, he did see something, and he did turn it around in the right way.”
Indeed since taking up the job, in late 2020, Harte has overseen successive league promotions, and they only fell short from promotion to Division One this year after losing their last game to Dublin.
It’s Dublin they meet again on Sunday, Louth playing only their second provincial football final in 63 years against a team looking to win their 13th on the trot.
Mulroy, still only 25, in no way disguises the scale of that challenge, still it’s exactly where he and Louth want to be.
“It’s about getting young people excited about Louth football, wanting to play for Louth. I’ve always said that’s one of my main goals, as a player, that we’ve come and we’ve left the jersey in a better place with a bit of pride.
“We are a small county with two massive League of Ireland clubs and there’s a lot of competition with rugby and soccer and I suppose that’s a challenge for Louth GAA.
“I feel my job and our jobs as players is to represent Louth as best we can so that young lads are making choices to hopefully play for Louth GAA over Dundalk or Drogheda. That’s the way it is and that’s the way it has to be.
“Look, it’s a culture change and getting to a Leinster final is massive. When I think back to when I was 12 years of age watching Louth in a Leinster final, it was dreams come true. It was absolutely incredible that day [despite the infamous loss to Meath].
“That’s what I grew up watching, that’s what I want to create for young players now. It doesn’t happen overnight and there have been bumps on the road, and I’m sure there’ll be more. But look, we’re on the way and Mickey and Gavin are a massive part of that and hopefully we can continue on that trend.”
For Mulroy, who has also captained his club Naomh Máirtín (with Jim McGuinness as coach) to successive Louth titles, the memory of the heavy championship defeats to Dublin in 2019 and 2020 are still fresh and those low points ultimately inspired change.
“I just hated the fact that Louth weren’t where I knew we could be. I hated that you’re always belittled because of where you’re from. And people don’t take you seriously, so that was my kind of driving force, even when we were getting beaten by teams in Division Three and Four.
“It was tough times, but Mickey has just changed absolutely everything that we’ve done. He demands the utmost from the structures, facilities, training kit, everything, so it’s just a standard lift and it’s exciting to be involved in it.
“I always think back to when I was 17 or 18, I was made Louth captain for the minor team, I don’t think anybody respected Louth and I hated that. Even for myself at the time as captain, I definitely felt that.
“So, when I was made Louth captain I just thought, well this has to change. That’s what I wanted to portray: ‘Yeah, we are from Louth and yeah, so what? Why can’t we be good? Why can’t we have teams that are winning Leinster? Why can’t we compete in the All-Ireland series? Why can’t we have All Stars?’
“And for Louth, over my time anyway, the buy in to the S&C [strength and conditioning] over the last two or three years has been incredible. It’s definitely something we would have labelled that we weren’t good enough at, or hadn’t bought in enough to.”
Mulroy knows, too, that even Harte’s magic has its limits, but another shot at Dublin, this time a Leinster final?
“I’m not delusional, I’m not going to sit here and tell you that we’re going to win, or that it’s going to be easy, or that just because we’ve had a decent enough league campaign, or because we won two championship matches, that we’re world beaters. Because we’re not.
“It’s going to be a massive task and look, it’ll be touch and go. As I said, we’re not going just to take part or to make up numbers. Finals aren’t there for that. I’m not saying it’s going to be easy but we’ll give it a crack.”
