DEFIANT Ger Brennan insists Louth’s journey is only beginning – despite getting lost on their way to Donegal.
The Leinster champions bowed out of the championship yesterday against Jim McGuiness’ men in Ballybofey.
Donegal blew Louth away in a rip-roaring second half, as they outscored their opponents 1-16 to 0-5 to kill the game and march into the last eight.
Brennan was coy on his future after two years in charge of the Wee County, but hopes this is only the start of something special after winning their first provincial title for 68 years this summer.
He said: “Look, all journeys do come to the end, but it should be the beginning of something new. We can see where the gaps are.
“Like all first experiences, the jubilation and almost relief and joy that you feel. When you look at 68 years, there were very few of us around.
“For this group of players to achieve that, for the people of Louth, it’s just a wonderful experience. That’s what we will remember the experience for.
“When you look at what Donegal did, we weren’t able to win possession. How efficient and how powerful they were in driving forward, that’s the part.
“You want to be playing in games like this to see where you actually are. The journey so far with the lads has been absolutely incredible.
“I think everyone should sit down and review the game critically as a group because that’s something, that process that we got into was something that we had to keep and then you try to plan from there.”
The Louth team bus arrived at MacCumhaill Park less than an hour before throw-in after taking a wrong turn from their Enniskillen base -and ending up in Sligo.
Throw-in was almost delayed as a result, Brennan insists their detour had no impact on their performance, despite shipping a 2-22 to 0-12 loss to the Ulster champs.
He said: “The honest to God truth was human error in our navigation. We stayed in the Killyhevlin Hotel and it took us maybe 2 hours and 20 minutes to get here today.
“If we had left from our centre of excellence in Darver in Louth it would have taken us 2 hours and 11 minutes, so we gave ourselves an extra few minutes in the travel.
“We were in Sligo. So Enniskillen is here, Ballybofey is there and we were down there. So we turned about 100 degrees to the direction to the left of the west. But the Wild Atlantic Way looks good. We’ll chance that the next day.
“It was human error in terms of navigation. But luckily we played well in the first half so maybe it worked!”
