By Shaun Casey

ARMAGH got their Division 3A league campaign off to a successful start, defeating Louth away from home by eight points. There are plenty of improvements to be made and a lot of learnings to take, but manager Karl McKeegan was just happy to get the two points.

Now he can focus his efforts on two upcoming home games, first against Monaghan and then Mayo after the break in the league. “

“We have Monaghan and then a break and then Mayo,” said McKeegan.

“Monaghan, I don’t know a lot about them, I’m going to have to do a bit of research. It’s going to be another tough encounter there’s no doubt about it.

“But again, what we learn from this week we can bring into the next game and that’ll set us up for the games after that. We’ll sit down, we’ll analysis it and we’ll train hard, and we’ll come out all guns firing for the Monaghan game.

“I want to try and get the supporters out; I’d like them to come out and support the boys. If they saw the effort, they’ve put in for us so far, it’s been massive.

“You want the supporters to come out and see these boys and cheer them on. A few extra supporters do the world of good for the boys.

“We’ve two home games now in the next three weeks and you’ve got to win your home games if you going to win leagues, so we’ll be looking for massive performances in the next two weeks.”

With the aid of a stiff breeze Armagh raced into a 17-point half time lead against Louth but let the Wee County back into it after the turnaround. By the time full-time whistle sounded, Louth had dwindled Armagh’s advantage to just eight points.

“The most important thing for us coming down here today was to get our two points,” insisted the Antrim native. “Obviously you want a performance as well, the first half I thought we were excellent, we moved the ball well.

“Don’t get me wrong, there was a big wind in it, and it showed in the second half what we have to do and we have to learn things and how to use it against the wind. We’re going to come up against the wind and I think we managed it poorly; we need to work on that.

“We needed to carry the ball when we were hitting it and we weren’t holding it up. There were the good sides and the bad sides but an eight-point win, you’ve got to be happy with that in your opening game. We didn’t work nearly half as hard as we should have.

“There is that but you have to work on these things. Some good signs but at the same time, we’re still learning. It’s a new team, this team that played today, there were only four players that played this time last year so it’s a new team getting to know each other and that.”