Malachy Clerkin: Ger Brennan's time with Louth will be remembered long after his shoes are filled

Irish Times

2 days ago

In a sense, Ger Brennan will never achieve more anywhere else than he already has with
Louth
. He will manage more teams, he will presumably win more trophies. But none of it will have the same impact as the shake, rattle and roll he gave Louth football this summer.
Think about it. If he does become the
Dublin
manager, be it now or in the future, what can he do there that will compare? The next Dubs team to win a Leinster title will be met by little more than a shrug. The next All-Ireland will be hailed to the heavens, celebrated lustily in all parts of the city. But it won't be like a spaceship falling out of the sky in the way Louth's Leinster title was.
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Ger Brennan steps down as Louth football manager
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In the week after they beat
Meath
at the end of May, everyone you talked to in Louth kept falling back on the same mantra. The kids have something to latch on to now in the GAA, in a way no Louth people have had for generations. If you're a Dublin supporter under the age of 20, you've spent essentially your whole sentient life watching your team win All-Irelands. If you're a Louth supporter under the age of 75, all your memories have been bitter ones. Until now.
Ger Brennan didn't change that all by himself but he'll be forever remembered as the man whose name was above the door when it happened. Given the players they have and the underage success the county has been racking up, maybe it looks from this vantage point like it was only a matter of time. But nobody was saying that when
Mickey Harte
skedaddled to the Derry job at the end of 2023.
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Louth's Sam Mulroy lifts the Delaney Cup after their Leinster final win over Meath. Photograph: James Crombie/Inpho
This was not inevitable. Anything but, in fact. When Brennan came on board, Louth had been to a Leinster final earlier in the year but had been torched by Dublin to the tune of 5-21 to 0-15. It was a day out for their supporters – a first Leinster final in 13 years and only a second since 1960. But that's all it was. Or all it looked like, from the outside anyway.
We all presumed that nobody was going to be taking Dublin's Leinster crown anytime soon. And that if anyone was going to, it would be when either Meath or
Kildare
got their house in order. Louth had been a decent league team under Harte, making it all the way up to finishing third in Division Two. But once he and Gavin Devlin left, that was surely going to be that for a while.
We were wrong. All of us. Not only did we underestimate Brennan, we didn't give the players themselves the credit they deserved. These were serious intercounty players, not starry-eyed kids with a ponytail and a dream. They had been around long enough to take Harte's departure in a notably more grown-up fashion than a lot of the people who were outraged on their behalf.
'Look, it was never Mickey Harte's county,' Sam Mulroy told The Irish Times when Brennan took over. 'It's players who represent Louth on the pitch. Managers come and go. When they're there, they give it their all. There's a respect there between managers and players and you get on with it. It's as exciting having Ger in as it was having Mickey there.
Sam Mulroy after scoring a goal for Louth in the Leinster final. Photograph: James Crombie/Inpho
'It's a serious position to be in for a Louth footballer to be going playing under All-Ireland winners. Nothing has changed in that way. Life goes on. We've played under many managers before, we'll play under many in years to come. It is what it is. We do a job when we cross those white lines, we do it to the best of our ability every time. It's just a different message, a different voice every few years. That's the way GAA is.'
And so they kicked on. They led Dublin at half-time in last year's Leinster final and finished second in their group behind Kerry before beating Cork to make the All-Ireland quarter-final. Craig Lennon won their first All Star since 2010. Brennan's first season was so much more than a consolidation of the Harte era and it gave them a sniff of more.
Along the way, Brennan's management style turned out to be exactly what they needed, when they needed it. He is a deep believer in numbers and data and his time in UCD has certainly left him well acquainted with the more jargony end of the sports science world. He is no seller of pipe dreams. The Louth players always knew what was expected of them and what was achievable when they fulfilled those expectations.
But on top of all that, there's a decency and an emotional intelligence to Brennan the manager that, let's just say, wasn't always visible in Brennan the player. He was able to relate to the younger members of the squad just as readily as the likes of Tommy Durnin, alongside whom he actually played for a summer in Boston back in the day. The Louth players responded and he took them beyond themselves.
Ger Brennan and Dessie Farrell after last year's Leinster final. Photograph: Tom Maher/Inpho
So what now? There had been rumours on the ground in Louth over the past while that Brennan would be moving on – and maybe Dessie Farrell's admission over the weekend that the Dublin County Board had known all year that he would be finishing up at the end of the 2025 championship bears that out.
He's the obvious choice for the Dublin job, if for no other reason than the list of viable candidates is not overly long. With more departures likely and no underage success coming through to feed the next wave of Dublin teams, following Farrell, Jim Gavin and Pat Gilroy is no picnic. But then, neither was the Louth job when Brennan arrived.
As for Louth, they will be fine. More than fine, in fact. They have the All-Ireland under-20 runners-up to start filtering into the senior ranks, as well as an excellent minor team that was just pipped in a thrilling Leinster final this year, many of whom are eligible again in 2026. They have a good age profile too – Mulroy, Lennon and Ryan Burns are all still in their mid-20s, with Durnin the only one of their main men over 30. Regardless of who takes over, they will be a force in what is suddenly a revitalised Leinster championship.
One way or another, they are still rising. Brennan played a huge part in that and they will be forever intertwined.