Goal-hungry Louth obliterate Carlow in Navan

Goal-hungry Louth maintained their strong recent form by comfortably seeing off Carlow in Navan, setting up a Leinster SFC quarter-final clash with Kildare.

Sam Mulroy, the Wee County's captain and prolific frontman throughout their successful Allianz League Division 3 campaign, delivered again with 2-05 while there were goals too from Conor Grimes, Tommy Durnin and Ciaran Byrne.

Playing with the stiff wind initially in a game delayed by 10 minutes due to congestion on the principal route into Navan from Louth, Mickey Harte's men racked up a big early lead thanks to goals from Grimes and Byrne and they finished off Carlow with three more second-half majors.

Despite back to back promotions, it's the county's first win in the Championship under Harte and they will be hopeful of an upset next weekend against the Lilywhites to extend their provincial run.

As for Carlow, a poor season that yielded just one win in Division 4 of the league, shows no signs of getting any better and they will head now to the inaugural Tailteann Cup competition.

All the pre-match indicators pointed to Louth, promoted to Division 2 after another positive Allianz League campaign, having too much for a young Carlow side.

It panned out that way too with Louth, admittedly aided by a stiff wind, bursting out of the blocks and going a long way to putting this encounter beyond Carlow inside just 20 minutes.

They led by 1-05 to 0-01 at that stage with Mulroy and Ciaran Downey both registering a brace of points each before powerful full-forward Grimes latched onto a ball down the right and unleashed a piledriver shot across goalkeeper Ciaran Cunningham to the net.

Back in 2018 when Carlow last won an opening round game in Leinster, overcoming Louth as it happens,