Mickey Harte's impact in Louth has been likened by John Doyle to that of Mick O'Dwyer in Kildare over three decades ago.
Having completed 18 seasons with Tyrone, Harte moved straight to Louth last year and has guided them to successive promotions, meaning that they will share Division Two with Kildare next year.
But the counties get a chance to pit their wits against each other before that in Sunday’s Leinster quarter-final, with Louth coming into the game on the back of a seven-game winning streak.
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Doyle, who is now part of Glenn Ryan’s Kildare management team, was handed his debut by O’Dwyer back in 2000, when the county won their last Leinster title, a decade after the Kerry legend first landed in the county
He recalled: “I remember when Micko came to Kildare first, I remember being at the county final back in 1990 and he was introduced to the crowd at half-time and the place was absolutely jammed to the rafters because Mick O’Dwyer was coming to Kildare. It was like the messiah.
“Kildare had been in the doldrums for so long and I think it was the fact that someone like Mick O’Dwyer saw something in Kildare and it did lift the whole county. Came very close there in the early 90s, he left, came back again and then we saw what happened, won two Leinsters and he just lifted the whole county.
“I’m sure in Louth it’s something similar. Louth are a traditionally huge footballing county. You can see with the crowds that are travelling now.
“They’ve gone from Division Four to Division Three to Division Two, it has to lift everyone involved with Louth football.
“That’s a huge plus for them but we have to distance ourselves from that too and make sure that we bring our best performance,” added Doyle, who was speaking at the launch of the 2022 Beko Club Champion competition.
Kildare are seen as the Leinster county most likely to topple Dublin having beaten them in the League this year but they haven’t been competitive against them in the Championship since 2011. Doyle, who works as a games development administrator in the county, is confident that they can now bridge the gap.
“Do we think on our day that we can challenge anyone in Leinster? Absolutely and I think if we didn’t we are in a poor position.
“In Kildare the structures are good, club football is good and I have been involved in a lot of stuff that happens at underage. Young lads are mad to play football for Kildare and that goes right the way from Under-14s right through to 20s.
“We held under-15 trials and we had over 180 kids coming in mad to play football for Kildare and that is a huge, huge benefit that many other counties don’t have and it is a strong position to be in so I think it is up to the other counties to try and get themselves up to Dublin.
“We can go into finances and all that comes with that but our job is to put the best 15 Kildare players out to perform at the best to take on any team in Leinster or beyond and I think, and maybe some people will say I have blind loyalty, I certainly think Kildare on their day will be a match for anybody.”
Doyle confirmed that the long-serving Eoin Doyle will not be available for Sunday’s tie in Tullamore, a legacy of his club Naas’s run to January’s Leinster club final.
Meanwhile, Paul Galvin has been schooling Kildare players on kicking off their weaker foot, Doyle has revealed.
It emerged earlier this year that Galvin would be coming on board with Glenn Ryan’s management team in some capacity, something that Ryan was reluctant to clarify, but, judging by Doyle’s comments, the former Kerry star appears to be a skills coach.
Doyle explained: “He used to do a little bit with them before the gym session, just focusing on the basic skills.
“He’s very much been a two-sided player and focusing players on developing both sides of their body and if you’re going down the left side of the pitch, being able to kick with the left foot and it’s just focused and it’s very much just based on the skills and he just comes in, he knows what he has to do.
“He doesn’t try to be any more. He was conscious of the fact that there was a lot of Kildare lads and he didn’t want this to be about him or anything like that so he has done a few sessions with the lads and the lads, I think, are really focused on that side of their game.”
“We assume when players come into that level that they have continually developed their skills of the game and we assume that they’re able to do all these things but, like anything, if you don’t focus on them, to try and improve them, try to get better…
“It will result in players being better and players being able to perform the skills under pressure at a high level using both sides of the body so that’s where he’s been, where he’s come in and he’s done some work for us and time will tell whether it’s worked out well.”
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