Clubs

Clubs contest the Louth Senior Football Championship. That competition's most successful club is Newtown Blues, with 23 titles.

Dundalk Young Irelands is the county's oldest GAA club.^[2] The club represented Louth in the first All-Ireland Football final which was played at Beech Hill on 29 April 1888 against Limerick Commercials.^[3]

County team

The earliest recorded inter-county football match took place in 1712 when Louth faced Meath at Slane.^[4] A fragment of a poem from 1806 records a football match between Louth and Fermanagh at Inniskeen, Co Monaghan.

When Louth GAA sent the team into training in Dundalk for the 1913 Croke Memorial replay under a soccer trainer from Belfast, the move caused more than a ripple through the Association. For thirty years full-time training in bursts of a week or so before a big match were common. After that the two or three times a week gatherings became more popular.

Between 1945 and 1953 Louth and Meath met 13 times. The crowds got bigger and bigger each time as they played draw after draw in the Championship. The attendance of 42,858 at a thrilling 1951 replay remained a record for a provincial match other than a final for forty years the four match series between Meath and Dublin in 1991. The rivalry with Meath has never fizzled out, as witnessed by a stirring Leinster semi-final in 1998. Nor has controversy, as witnessed by Graham Geraghty's "wide" 45th minute point. In 1957 showband star Dermot O'Brien was late for the All-Ireland final and joined the team when the parade was completed. Prior to the game O'Brien had captained the side in the semi-final success, when the regular captain Patsy Coleman had been injured. Both Ardee men tossed a coin to see who would captain the team. O'Brien won the toss. Coleman today still has the match ball. O'Brien played a key role as Louth beat Cork with the help of a goal from Sean Cunningham with five minutes to go. Dermot O'Brien died on 21 May 2007. As both Cork and Louth wear Red and White, on that day Louth wore the green of Leinster, while Cork wore the blue of Munster.

Eamonn McEneaney was manager from 2006 to 2009 and guided them to their most recent success, the O'Byrne Cup when they defeated DCU in the 2009 final played in the Gaelic Grounds in Drogheda.

On 27 June 2010, Louth reached their first Leinster Senior Championship Final in 50 years. During the Leinster Final on 11 July that year, anger and controversy erupted when, during the 74th minute of the match against Meath, a goal was awarded by the referee after brief consultation with only one of the match umpires (although close circuit camera evidence shown on the RTÉ Two coverage of the game proved that the ball was carried over the line by a Meath player). However, Meath received the 2010 Leinster Title and the cup. Louth have been represented by two players in the International Rules Series versus Australia in recent years, Paddy Keenan and Ciarán Byrne.^[5]