Ger Brennan: 'Between having kids and winning a few All-Irelands playing, this is right up there'
HE HAS SAMPLED Croke Park winning days as a player in both Dublin county colours and St Vincent’s club colours, but today’s sideline experience as Louth manager is a new career highlight for Ger Brennan.
Before a crowd of over 65,000 people, Brennan steered his Louth team to their first Leinster senior title in 68 years as they edged out Meath by two points amidst an electric Croke Park atmosphere.
“You had two new teams competing in a provincial final for the first time in 15 years,” summarised Brennan afterwards.
“And to be fair to the Meath supporters, the atmosphere they brought – the flares on the Hill – it would give you goosebumps.
“Credit to both sets of players. Both of them came out with some stylish plays. It’s an incredible experience. Between having kids and winning a few All-Irelands playing, this is right up there. This is an incredible experience.
“To be fair to the lads, we push them but they push us. I’m always quick and think it’s important…we have to mention the work of those who were there before us; the previous management, the previous executive.
“There’s a number of fellas who were part of the previous management who stayed on in the background.”
The full-time delirium amongst the Louth players on the pitch and the supporters in the stands, was easy to understand and appreciate.
“68 years is a long time, and I’ve been up there now, it’s my second season and you get an appreciation of how much they love their football and how much they wanted it,” stated Brennan.
“And while I’m the fortunate one to be there at the moment in terms of someone has to manage it, but I have to give massive credit to the players. The amount of work that they put in, their enthusiasm to learn, their desire to get better, and it’s just incredible, second to none, and it’s something I haven’t experienced before.
“They’re never happy. They just want more, we want more, and look at today was all about winning and we won. Finals are always always about winning, and we we did it. Luckily it was our turn to go over the line for the first time, that’s always a tricky one to win.”
Louth’s game management in the finale was impressive. They recovered from the concession of Mathew Costello’s goal to nail the key scores through Sam Mulroy and Craig Lennon, but more impressively they closed the game down by expertly protecting possession to run down the clock.
A high-risk strategy at times but it paid off handsomely.
“We are very good at ball in hands,” said Brennan.
“And it’s something that the experience of some of the older guys, they’re kind of able to control things and and they’re good at manipulating opposition defences.
“I was hoping Conor Grimes would have run the other direction down to the canal end as opposed to the hill end. But it it was something we had practiced and something we spoke about and I suppose we all would have watched the Ulster final last night, Donegal managed to do that quite well to. To be able to close it out was superb.
“Nerve-wracking the first half, fairly focused maybe the second half, we got to have a good chat at half-time. Meath played all the football again, probably similar traits to the previous two rounds we played against Kildare and against Laois where we could be much more direct, far quicker to ask questions of the opposition.
“Some worldly goals from our lads in the first half, just incredible really, to be fair to them. It’s brilliant. I’m lost for words, to be honest.”
Brennan is confident this can be a springboard for his team.
“Once you win one, you get to the top of the mountain and you see, ‘I like this, I want another one.’
“I want more of this. The view is good. I want to get as many of these experiences as I can before my career is up. That is something we’ve said to the lads.
“It’s intrinsic, it’s spiritual, it’s psychological, but it’s also quite measured too. When we look at the gym stats, the fitness stats, the shot to score ratio, the body fat, all these things can be measured.
“As Sam (Mulroy) said if you don’t change anything, nothing changes and that that gets measured gets done and that’s something we’re quite good at from a scientific point of view.
“If the lads want to go on and win more, that’s their call.”
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