Down football manager, Conor Laverty.
By John Harrington
When Down manager Conor Laverty met Mickey Donnelly to sell him his vision of where he wanted to bring the Mourne County footballers and convince him to join his backroom team, it was a quick piece of business.
Laverty’s sales pitch was a convincing one, and Donnelly recalls now he immediately knew “it was too good of an opportunity to miss out on.”
It wasn’t just that Donnelly agreed there was a lot of potential in the Down panel, the prospect of working with Laverty was just as big a draw.
“There's a wee bit of magic with him, there's no point in saying anything different, he's a very impressive man,” says Donnelly.
“It's no secret he's very busy, he is a busy man, he has his fingers in a lot of pies.
"He's playing club football, he's a successful farmer, he has a house full of cubs, he has a couple of coffee trucks on the road, he's a busy guy but his passion and his desire for football, I have never seen anything like it.
“You want to call it game smarts, you want to call it game IQ, whatever you want to call it, it's just relentless. I don't know where he gets the time but he gets it and his ability to even simplify the message is amazing.
“I've worked with good coaches and saw good coaches over the years, they've maybe complicated things, maybe colour-coded things, Conor makes it crystal clear for everybody and given the range of individuals that you're working with in a county set-up, the message has to be clear.
“He's a wonderful communicator and the simplicity of the messages that he gets across is probably the net result of that. I just think there's a wee bit of magic with him. He's a special wee person and that's emphasised because you're looking around and going 'How does this man sleep? Where does he get the time?'. Football is front and centre all the time.”
Down selector Mickey Donnelly during the 2023 Tailteann Cup Pre-Final media event at Croke Park in Dublin. Photo by Piaras Ó Mídheach/Sportsfile
Most inter-county managers nowadays prefer to delegate the bulk of the coaching responsibilities to others, but Laverty is very hands on at most Down training sessions.
“Oh, unbelievable,” says Donnelly. “When we all came on board, meself, Marty (Clarke), Deccie (Morgan), we probably thought if you're looking for a defined role of what your job description was then you're not going to get it because it can change in situ.
“He is hands-on, he's a brilliant coach, he is an absolutely fantastic coach. I'd spoke to Séamus McEnaney in the past about the work that he had done with Monaghan. Lav left Monaghan to go and take the Down U-20s and that's a reflection of his ambition as well. He is hands-on and you talk about leaders in life being people-centred, that's him.
“He's never going to be passing that on to someone else to do dirty work. There's time he can revert to sitting in the stand, but it won't last long. He wants to be in the middle of things.
“The fact that he is still playing club football gives us an unbelievable insight. Because he can say, 'Ah but listen, that guy was marking me a couple of weeks ago and he is tight' or 'he won't let you make that wee run in behind' or 'he will take you the whole way up the field'.
“That's an insight you won't get from anyone else which is totally unique. And listen, in another world he probably still could be playing. If some of the rest of us were still managing the team he could probably still put a jersey on for you. It's unique but I firmly believe that it works."
Laverty has cast the net far and wide in the county to give as many players as possible the chance to prove themselves, and Donnelly believes that will stand them in good stead going forward.
“I think we're at 44 players we have used from the National League into the Ulster championship into the Tailteann Cup, which is phenomenal, a phenomenal amount of players,” he says.
“It's probably reflective of the fact that we have an awful lot of players of a similar ilk, of a similar ability. And it's probably reflective of a new management team as well who are trying to reach out and to find players who have the right mentality and ability, if you like.
“That has been challenging, looking at that amount of players has been difficult but I think it will leave us in a much stronger position in Year Two.”
Meath manager Colm O'Rourke, left, and Down selector Mickey Donnelly during the 2023 Tailteann Cup Pre-Final media event at Croke Park in Dublin. Photo by Piaras Ó Mídheach/Sportsfile
Down have already played Saturday’s Tailteann Cup Final opponents, Meath, in the competition, losing to the Royals by two points in the group phase.
That day they just weren’t clinical enough, kicking 17 wides, but you couldn’t fault their finishing in the Tailteann semi-final when they banged eight goals past Laois.
“We'd take somewhere in the middle on Saturday,” says Donnelly with a smile.
“If we could score four goals and eight wides, that would be alright. If only life was that simple. I just think credit to Meath on the day, they were really well set up.
“They defended in numbers and they made it really, really difficult for us to penetrate. I think Parnell Park plays fairly narrow as well. The lads also lost the U-20 semi-final at Parnell Park so there's maybe a correlation there in terms of the way we want to play football and maybe Parnell Park doesn't make it that easy to a certain extent.
“I think people were a wee bit disparaging about Meath after that, we kicked 17 wides but Meath had 11 or 12 wides as well.
“So we have a huge challenge on Saturday. We've got to be a lot more efficient and we've got to do an awful lot more to close out Meath's full-forward line as well."
