Buzzing Longford return to HQ after 'rough years'

"It's unbelievable, it's unbelievable. We've been looking for days like this for a long time. We've had a few very, very rough years."

Longford's breathless match-winner Daniel Reynolds captured what promotion and a league final spot meant to the county after his last-gasp fisted point completed the most improbable of comebacks against Wicklow last Sunday.

It was a fitting conclusion to a Division 4 campaign where the sequence of results appeared to have no rhyme or reason, no thread of logic running through them.

The FRC rule changes have had the effect of making football matches more madcap, more anarchic - and the evidence from this year's league is that this may be even more pronounced in the lower tiers.

Longford began by losing at home to London for the first time ever and needed a goal with practically the last kick to beat lowly Waterford in a rearranged fixture.

After getting up a head of steam with wins over Antrim and table-toppers Carlow, they proceeded to ship a hammering against Leitrim in the penultimate game, which looked to have scotched the notion that they were making any great strides.

Carol Vorderman would have had a headache trying to figure out the permutations for the final round of games but one thing that seemed certain at 1.45 on Sunday last was that Longford would not be among the promoted teams.

With 13 minutes remaining, they still trailed by nine and the grand finale in the division was petering out. Then came the crazy finale, Oisín O'Toole and Paddy Moran scored goals and belief coursed through the home side. The increasingly loud guttural roars from the terrace that greeted every single score seemed to galvanise Longford and spook their opponents.

Deep in injury-time, with the scores back level, Daniel Reynolds, whose goal had spared their blushes in Waterford, was picked out near the end-line on the left side and fist passed over from a tight angle. Longford were ahead for the first time in a game, practically on the final whistle.

Eight years ago, they had lost promotion from Division 3 in their home ground in agonising circumstances, when Seamus Quigley - not Sean - had converted a contentious free deep in injury-time to send Fermanagh up. Now, it was Longford's turn to snatch it at the death.

The hope for Reynolds and co is that will bring the curtain down on the county's 'rough years'.

In the last half-decade or so, Longford's borderline comical prowess in the O'Byrne Cup is all they've had to crow about.

The county won back-to-back O'Byrne Cup titles in 2023 and 2024. The cancellation of the pre-season tournament in 2025 held out the possibility that Longford could henceforth be referred to as "reigning O'Byrne Cup champions" in match reports for the rest of eternity.

When the competition returned this year, they were only beaten on a coin toss. In the public mind, the record enjoyed the status of a gentle running joke more than anything else. Longford's success was taken as clear evidence of how little other counties cared about the pre-season competitions.

The county had punched somewhat above its weight in the 2010s. Between 2009 and 2019, they had a curious but admirable record where they won in Round 1 of the qualifiers every single year - with the exception of 2018, when their Leinster SFC victory over Meath meant they skipped the round for a change. The run was a tribute to a sort of consistency and doggedness.

During this stretch, they took down Mayo (most famously), Monaghan, Derry twice (once when they had been Division 1 finalists), Cavan and Down.

The win over Mayo had at least some echoes of the campaign, in the sense that it came from nowhere. Longford had finished near the bottom of Division 4 that spring, only ahead of London and Kilkenny (who soon were to give up attempting to play National League football again).

The assumption was that Glenn Ryan was bound for the exit door at the end of two underwhelming years. In the second half, Paul Kelly buried a goal to edge Longford ahead for the first time, sparking a frantic finish. Mayo desperately scrambled to get level, the two teams going tit-for-tat before Sean McCormack curled over the winning score.

Instead it was Mayo manager, the late great John O'Mahony, who was the one announcing his resignation to reporters outside the Pearse Park dressing room. Mayo blogger An Spáilpín Fanach wrote that O'Mahony had "like Humbert, met his Waterloo in Longford."

The win had a revitalising effect for Longford, who won successive league titles in Division 4 and Division 3 in 2011 and 2012.

The county suffered from the same player turnover issues that particularly afflict counties in the bottom two divisions but they had a number of celebrated stalwarts through it all.

Paul Barden, by acclamation their best footballer of the 21st century and one of their best ever, retired in early 2015 after a lengthy inter-county career which began in the late 90s. Killoe's Mickey Quinn, who spent three seasons in the AFL with Essendon Bombers, inherited the mantle of leadership. His clubmate McCormack was heavily relied upon in attack.

The most sensational story to emerge from the county in those years wasn't to do with the county side but Mullinalaghta's staggering Leinster club title victory at the end of 2018, which led to appearances on the Late Late Show and the Six One sports team decamping to north Longford for their Monday bulletin. Eamon Horan performed his presenting his duties in a Mullinalaghta jersey, which he donned live on air.

In an era of Dublin domination and rural depopulation, the spectacle of the smallest club in the province's smallest county winning a Leinster senior title clearly struck a chord.

As the 2010s generation of players drifted away, Longford slipped down the pecking order. After a yo-yo period in the first half of the last decade, they settled in Division 3 for an eight-year stint between 2016 and 2023. They finally fell through the trapdoor and into the fourth tier in 2023 and this seemed to damage morale further.

The last few years have been their grimmest period since at least the mid-1990s. Their decline coincided with the arrival of the Tailteann Cup, a competition in which they've failed miserably to raise any sort of gallop.

Their best performance was a preliminary quarter-final appearance in 2023, where they lost to Down. In the past two years, they have failed even to escape the group - a tall order given that three of four emerge.

The nadir was probably reached in 2024, when they lost to Waterford in a game which attracted notoriety (if nothing else) for its princely attendance figure of 75. Longford football was plumbing new depths of irrelevance. There was, at least, some glimmers of a brighter future, when their minors won a Leinster title that summer - their third provincial title at the grade in this century after 2002 and 2010.

Until a few weeks ago, the mood music hadn't improved any. Under Mike Solan, Mayo's former Under-21 All-Ireland winning manager, the 2025 campaign hadn't demonstrated much evidence of improvement. Player turnover from year-to-year remained ruinously high.

Most predictions concerning Division 4 had them occupying the bottom half of the table. They were having a hard time cracking the top-30 of the various 'power rankings' that proliferate on the airwaves.

Now, they're headed for Croke Park for the first time since the 2018 Leinster championship. Carlow, who looked to be on a fast-track for promotion, until they were derailed by Longford in Round 5, will probably go in as favourites, but only tentatively so.

In an era when Division 1 counties seem to regard league finals as an inconvenience, it's a reminder of how much of a draw they are for players and supporters outside the top tier.

"We haven't been to Croker in God knows how many years," said Reynolds afterwards. "We just wanted it so bad.

"A day out in the sun in Croker, that's exactly what we do all the training for."

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