Inside Track: Johnston's club issues brings back memories of old Louth Finals

Jerome Johnston, the manager of Ballybay Pearse Brothers had a stick situation when tasked with usurping All Champions Kilcoo last Sunday.   

He is a former Down player, and Kilcoo is his home club. He had an input as Kilcoo gathered momentum on the way to becoming Ulster champions and winners of the most recent Andy Merrigan Cup.

His sons, Jerome Jnr, Ryan and Shealan play with Kilcoo along with six of his nephews, Ceilum Doherty and the Branagan clan, Aidan, Aaron, Darryl, Niall and Eugene.

So, Jerome senior was dressed in the Kilcoo black-and-white when they took to St Tiernach’s Park last Sunday afternoon, defending their Ulster and All-Ireland crowns? Definitely not. 

At the beginning of this year Johnston took on the role Ballybay joint-manager with Mark Doran, and not only has he overseen Pearse Brothers’ splendid win in the Monaghan championship – they got the better of multiple title winners, Scotstown, in the final – he was at Armagh’s Athletic Grounds to see his side score a shock but deserved win over Crossmaglen Rangers.

Johnston, no doubt, would have preferred a meeting with any of the other six teams still in the competition. But given their standing as All-Ireland champions, Kilcoo would almost certainly have been in the way somewhere along the line if Ballybay were to make further progress. The Down side prevailed in the end, 2-14 to 1-7.

All of this brings back memories of the Louth senior final of 1965. Newtown Blues were kingpins at the time, going for a fifth successive title. They were out against debutants, O’Rahilly’s, their Drogheda neighbours. The game, as you would expect, was given a Gaelic Grounds setting.

It’s not known if the four Leech brothers who were due to take the field that day were all living together at the time; if they were, it would have been an interesting breakfast table to be sitting around on the morning of the game.

Liam and Paddy were on the Blues team, while Mickey and Joey were leading lights for O’Rahilly’s. Blues were the overwhelming favourites, but O’Rahilly’s had more up their up their sleeves than their elbows.

Michael McKeown, known to just about everyone in football as ‘Muckle’, was a forward for club and county, and got lots of scores as O’Rahilly’s made it to their first final. But for this game he was at centre-half, the specific purpose of keeping a check on the Blues’ vastly experienced Jim ‘Blackie’ Judge.

It worked a treat. McKeown gave a man-of-the-match performance, while his brother, Paddy, got the goal in a 1-9 to 0-5 win.

It was 1-6 to 0-1 at the break, and in the second half O’Rahilly’s introduced one of the stalwarts of Louth football, the veteran Paddy McArdle, as a sub. McArdle had won a senior championship with St Mary’s as far back as 1948.

It didn’t take Blues long to recover. They won the following year and the year after that, and but for the O’Rahilly’s defeat would have had an unprecedented seven-in-a-row.

There were other occasions when brothers faced brothers in big matches. The Regans played against each other in the meetings of Dundalk teams, Gaels and Young Irelands way back, and more recently, in 1991, the same two clubs had brothers in opposition, Benny and Philip McArdle lining out with Gaels and Paul with Irelands in an intermediate final.

And as for dilemmas, there was nearly one in a certain house in Bellurgan Point in 2014. The green-and-white flags were already out for a senior final, St Patrick’s having won their semi-final. But who would they be playing? Gaels and Dreadnots were due to meet in a replay.

Dreadnots won, removing the need for putting some blue among the green.