When Conor Laverty was first appointed Down under-20 manager, at the end of 2020, he reckoned he knew every single teenage player of significance in the province.
“I felt that I had a handle on every young player in Ulster coming through, be that through club or through school,” he says.
Two years later, he took the Down senior job and his focus naturally shifted. For a while, he stopped adding the names of “ones to watch” to his personal database before realising the slippage.
“So I spent a lot of time this year going to schools games all throughout the province,” he explains. “I just felt I needed to get my edge back, needed to get my knowledge back.”
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If it isn’t already clear, there is more than a hint of the obsessive about Laverty, a father of five who in recent years has been everything from a sheep farmer, to a coffee dock owner, to the GAA development officer in Trinity College, to an All-Ireland club title-winning joint captain with Kilcoo. And, of course, since the end of 2022, the Down senior manager. Much of it at the same time.
“It doesn’t sit well with me when ... I don’t like being part of something and it not going well,” he explains.
You can appreciate then how Laverty felt when watching the Down seniors trudge through 2022 under James McCartan without winning a single game. They played 11 competitive games, lost 10, drew the other. At the end of it all, their scoring difference was minus 60.
“I think a culture had crept in, that losing was acceptable, players not conducting themselves the best off the field, issues around their lifestyle,” says Laverty, reflecting on that period before he took over.
“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 One for four or five seasons and he had taken them to an All-Ireland final. I think players just 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 couldn’t commit and could not get to the required level.”
Those who could handle it have been rewarded. In the 36 competitive games that Down have played under Laverty, across 2023 and 2024 so far, they have won 26, a 72 per cent win rate.
Down were promoted from Division Three in March and if they beat Laois in Saturday’s Tailteann Cup final at Croke Park they’ll be guaranteed a place in the 2025 All-Ireland SFC.
From Laverty’s perspective, the players are responding well to the challenge he has put in front of them.
“I think this bunch of players have thrived off that, they’ve excelled at being driven, to having standards demanded of them, to not going through the motions in training, because high standards are expected,” he says. “That has brought them to a different level.”
They are not the finished article though. Defeats to Meath and Westmeath in Croke Park finals under Laverty’s watch will give opponents Laois hope. As will the fact that Sligo were a point up on Down in the seventh minute of stoppage-time in last month’s semi-final. Down eventually got the job done after extra-time.
“It’s a very, very young Down team,” notes Laverty. “We’ve looked at different teams throughout Ireland and their age profiles and we’d be significantly lower than a lot of them. People say to me, ‘Ah, you can’t get over the line’ but I’ve been in experiences, particularly at club level, where you were there or thereabouts and just couldn’t get over the line.
“The only way you can do better, the only way you experience how to deal with those moments is by being there and playing in them time after time.”
Rumour has it that Laverty will shortly take a family holiday and that there may be a running track and pitch at the resort. It’s entirely coincidental, of course, that he’s thinking about playing on with Kilcoo. A beautiful obsession, which his Down players appear to share.
“They take a lot of ownership now and would lead it themselves,” he says.
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