Laverty hails player-driven Down unit eyeing next level

In 2022, Down failed to win a single match in league and championship, a year that started on a bright note for the county with Kilcoo dramatically winning the All-Ireland club championship.

Joint-captain on that February day was Conor Laverty, a member of the Down side that reached the Sam Maguire decider in 2010.

A dozen years on and Laverty was still in the thick of it, helping his club win silverware and then coaching the county to an Ulster U-20 success. But at senior level, the Mournemen were struggling. James McCartan’s second coming as boss was blighted by poor results and player defections, with a number of high-profile Kilcoo squad members not making themselves available for selection.

Down’s footballing nadir was being played out. And then Laverty was asked to step up. The graph is on the rise again. 2023 saw the Red and Black reach the Tailteann Cup final. This year promotion to Division 2 was achieved before Armagh were ran close in the Ulster semi-final.

The Tailteann beckoned again, with Down fancied to go better better than 12 months ago. Saturday afternoon sees them take on Laois in this year’s decider.

Leaving a trio of pre-season McKenna Cups aside, it’s 30 years since Down have won silverware of note. A drizzly September afternoon marked the county’s last All-Ireland victory. At that time it was five final appearances – five victories. The aristocrats of Ulster had become the aristocrats of Ireland. Laverty’s hope is that Down can get back to the glory days and he’s very determined to play his part in raising expectations further.

Speaking to the media ahead of the Tailteann Cup final, he said: “I’m investing in it now, I really am. I don’t like being part of something and it not going well, or being part of something and there’s this perception out there that we’re not dining at the top table. It’s just whenever you have a passion for something and a desire to be the best you can be, you’ll leave no stone unturned on that journey and I think that’s very important.”

Laverty, however, was only too aware that things had drifted in Down, adding that “a culture had crept in, that losing was acceptable”. The downturn, he felt, had much to do with the attitude of playing personnel not wanting to strive for better things.

“You had players not conducting themselves the best off the field, issues around their lifestyle. I don’t think it was down to management as much as what people made it out to be. James [McCartan] was with Down when they were in Division 1 for four or five seasons and he had taken them to an All-Ireland final. I think players got into a mindset where football wasn’t first for them in their lives.

“Winning didn’t mean as much to them. They got to a stage where they were accepting the level they were at and they were comfortable in that. The key to it was a culture change and a demanding of certain standards, pushing them hard and pushing them to places where they would come out of that comfort zone. And that wasn’t easy. We lost lads who could not commit and could not get to the required level.”

The collective in Down, it would appear, are now pulling together, with the senior manager satisfied that those under his tutelage are making greater efforts.

“They’ve excelled at being driven, to having standards demanded of them, not going through the motions in training, but that high standards are expected.

“That has brought them to a different level. They take a lot of ownership now and would lead it. A lot of the heavy lifting from the management side of things has been done; this is very much a player-driven group now and that is great to see. We had good standards last year and got to the pitch of where we wanted to go.”

Laverty also praised the contribution that former Derry coach and manager Ciaran Meenagh has made since his addition to the management ticket.

“Ciaran gave us another injection of an insight into a team who had been at the top level; a person who had come from Division 4 right through to taking a team to an Ulster title; that knowledge that he brought and also the edge that he brought. We have been friends for quite a long time and there are very few people that I would trust and look at to say that they are at the pitch of what I would expect.”

Inter-county management is now an all-consuming role; in fact it has been for quite as while. Proper coaching across all grades and an awareness of the talent coming through, not only in you own patch but elsewhere, is crucial.

“I think that’s very important that there’s a lot of good men and women in Down who are putting a lot of time and effort into coaching,” Laverty stated.

“I think the standard of underage in Down is really coming to the fore now. There’s a lot of good teams and I can see even from early stages in secondary school right through now that we’re starting to compete again with the likes of the Derry and Tyrone schools.

“That’s always a good guide. You can say schools football, probably even more so for me, whenever I took the U20s job I felt that I had a handle on every young player in Ulster coming, be that through club or through school.

“If we were playing somebody I had a knowledge of who we were coming up against, who they were. I thought I had taken my eye off that ball whenever I took the U20s job so I spent a lot of time this year going to school games all throughout the province. I just felt I needed to get my edge back and needed to get my knowledge back so if I was coming up against somebody there would be no surprises.

“The first year of the U20s I felt I knew every U20 player that we were coming up against us. I knew every good player in Ireland from my work with St. Michael’s Enniskillen that year to Kilcoo being in an U16 Paul McGirr and Ulster minor competition.

“I think whenever you’re coming up to this level you need to have that kind of knowledge, there can’t be any surprises. I think there’s a good confidence even for your team if the know that their management team is fully invested in it.”

And so Laois await again in the Tailteann Cup. It’s a repeat of last year’s semi-final, a game where Down hit the O’Moore County for eight goals.

“It was a freak game, you don’t score eight goals at this standard,” was Laverty’s summation of that emphatic win for his side.

“And it was just that we got so many early and Laois probably then had to push out and go for the game which left holes.”

And while Down, a year on, are fancied again to prevail over the Midlanders, a 22-point winning margin is not expected.

The favourites expect, however, and their manager wants them to be back dining at the top table.

“We’re realistic to know that if we want to play in Sam Maguire football we need to be winning in the Tailteann Cup. Meath were better than us last year and it hurt us but we’re looking at this as an opportunity to win in Croke Park.

“For it to go to the next level, it would be a case where, in the group stages of the Sam Maguire next year, there was a Dublin or a Kerry or a Galway or a Mayo coming to Newry. That’s really where I think it would jump another level, that would catch everybody’s eye. The Tailteann Cup has been brilliant but there’s still always that side of it that there’s another level to go and that’s where we aspire to be.”

Watch the All-Ireland Football Championship semi-finals, Armagh v Kerry (5.30pm on Saturday on RTÉ2) and Donegal v Galway (4pm on Sunday on RTÉ2). Both games available on RTÉ Player. Follow a live blog on rte.ie/sport and the RTÉ News app and listen to commentary on RTÉ Radio 1

Watch Down v Laois in the Tailteann Cup final on Saturday from 2.45pm on RTE2 and RTÉ Player. Follow a live blog on rte.ie/sport and the RTÉ News app and listen to commentary on RTÉ Radio 1