It’s only two years since Down endured a most miserable season that led to a messy exit for one of its most celebrated sons in James McCartan. In 2022, they didn’t win a single game and made headlines for a breach of discipline on a training camp. Conor Laverty, having won an Ulster U-20 championship, was appointed. And he found a dressing room at odds with itself.
“I think a culture had crept in, that losing was acceptable, players not conducting themselves the best off the field, issues around their lifestyle,” he said ahead of their Croke Park clash with Laois.
“I don’t think it was down to management as much as what people made it out to be. James was with Down when we 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.”
Slowly things have changed. Laverty reckons Down togged their strongest 26 of his time in charge in their semi-final win over Sligo.
“I think this bunch of players have thrived off that, 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.
“The addition of Ciarán [Meenagh] gave us another injection of 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.”
Laverty reckons the foundations are in place to get Down back up the football ladder. The schools system is moving well again, while he reckons this year’s minor crop weren’t that far off Armagh and Derry, who duked it out in the All-Ireland final.
They go into tomorrow’s game as favourites having hit Laois for eight goals when they met in the semi-final. Irrelevant, Laverty says.
“It was a freak game. You don’t score eight goals at this standard. 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. You can see the difference in Laois last year… we actually done a wee bit of work over the weekend just on general sporting competitions where a turnaround in results is quite common and particularly in results where there was such a significant difference in the scoreline.
“We looked at Monaghan and Down in the Ulster Championship a number of years ago, we looked at Donegal and Down, from the Covid year where Donegal had just run over Down in Newry, to the next year where, granted, Donegal had their own issues, but Down turned the tables on them in Newry.
“So we’re under no illusions that, in sport, and like we looked at a number of different ones, we looked at boxing, Foreman and Ali, and we’re under no illusions that in a quick period of time things can turn so you can’t take anything for granted. You can’t be living on past results or past games. And we’ve put a lot of focus in that.”
