Did you go and meet them or you went to speak to some of them? Yeah, look,

we went in good faith to Lowes, as I say, at the back end of, me and Mickey at the back end of the COVID with Throne when Mickey stepped away from the Throne job and and he come and asked me to go with him to Lowth and I was like, Jesus, Mickey, what's taking you to Lowth? He had a brother that lived in Lowth, was a big GA man and had passed away and he had that sort of connection even with the chairman, Peter Fitzpatrick, he's that charismatic type of character, Peter, He'd done a lot of work to get Mickey to Louth and when Mickey was gone there was nowhere else I was going to go, only with him.

We spent three great years in Louth and were successful taking him from Division 4 to Division 2 and a Leinster final for the first time since 2010.

He told the Louth County Board that he would do three years and he'd done us three years.

like he was in a position to make a decision and like Derry came and came looking Mickey and like Mickey's a competitor like Derry was coming the back of winning two Ulster titles and like they were there to win in All-Ireland they were at that top table and I think that's what gave Mickey that that moment he wanted to go in and experience that I think he felt that he could win in All-Ireland with Derry and that was his pull and so like yeah that was his reasons for going to Derry and I could understand why he'd want to go to Derry and there's other wee bits and pieces going on at that time within Louth you know there was bits and pieces with Peter as chairman whether he was going to step away or not with the state there's a few things going on and him and Mickey was so tight you know and other bits and pieces that probably was the bit that pushed him over the cliff you know and yeah I was the manager of my local club at the time Arbo and I was flat out in club championship at that time and I knew he was meeting a couple of Derry officials for the Derry job but I couldn't go to the meeting because we were planning for a championship match the next night or whatever so I couldn't go to the meeting but at that meeting they must have sold it to Mickey and he had decided that he was going to go to Derry and then it was a wee bit of to and fro from me and Mickey I felt that I could understand why he'd want to go to Derry and But I was so, like, I never wanted to go to Louth in the first place, but then I didn't want to leave.

I felt that, you know, that I'd just built, there's just a real energy down there, like a way of life.

Like, I have so many friends down there now in Louth and just a way of life from the gym to how, to navigate my day down there.

But he said as well, you know, they made the decision in the 05 quarter-final against Dublin to take you off and then didn't put you in again for the replay and that was you, you didn't get back in for the rest of the year and was it partly... seeing the game moving away from you as well you had played a very specific excellent role for Toronto but did you see the game moving away from you even at I'm sure you'd have been grand at club level but the frustration of maybe not being able to reach that height again

Bad day at the office in Croke Park.

Yeah.

Look, uh, it's easy to come into these rooms when you're, when, when you're winning games and won big games, and we've won big games this year, and it's much more difficult when you come in and after a, a defeat like that.

But honestly, this, this journey that we've been on this year has been absolutely magical.

And yeah, the scenes the last two weeks in Louth, like, sometimes it's just bigger than the team.

Like, what our young people experienced this week and our s- our, our clubs and the local cl- uh, area, like, it's been amazing.

And yeah, the perfor- the, the performance today was disappointing, and the result was bitterly disappointing, and just seemed to be one of those games today that whatever could go wrong went wrong.

Do you think it had an impact? And, like, i- is it not important for the, for the county to experience something like that and first time in 69 years?

It was

an important game today, particularly after Portlaoise.

We couldn't find our groove or find a rhythm at all in Portlaoise and we were holding out and holding out and feeling that we'd eventually find our groove but we couldn't get no rhythm at all and yeah there's a lot of regrets and hurt after that game.

It took us a long time to win the Delaney Cup and we knew someday we'd have to hand it back but today we wanted to hand it back, we wanted at least to go down on the sword and we didn't feel that we did that at all and The amount of work our boys have been doing over the last number of months, it's not easy accepting that.

We felt the best way to do something about it was to strip back out onto the training field.

You alluded to that before the game that when you come to this stage in the All-Ireland Series you've got to be the best version of yourself and if you want to be that then the best place to start is in the training field.

That wasn't the perfect performance out there today by any stretch of the imagination.

Serious impact off the bench as well?