Mickey Donnelly excited about Down's potential

Down coach Mickey Donnelly says they’re not in the entertainment business or the business of making friends.

Donnelly says his players deserve credit for winning their first six games to secure promotion from Division Three of the Allianz Football League when they had a target on their back from day one.

The intensity will ramp up. tomorrow. though as they go to O'Donnell Park, Letterkenny to face Donegal in the Ulster Quarter-Final.

“13-10 at half-time,” said Donnelly of the Division Three Final victory over Wexford. “There's an awful lot of prominent teams with a lot more medals and trophies than we have who don't kick the ball an awful lot either.

“But despite this, they don't seem to be open to the level of scrutiny that we were. But it's noise.

“I think when you're at my age of proceedings and you've been about the block enough, you're able to recognise noise when that's what it is. We're answerable to the group.

“We're answerable to ourselves as a management team. We're answerable to the people of Down and outside of that, we're not in the entertainment business. We're not in the business of ultimately making friends.

“The GAA is great for relationships and craic and banter and all the rest, but we're there to try and win football matches in the best manner we can, given the set of players we have at our disposal.

“It's very easy to be disparaging about winning games and other people having opinions on performance and what not. It's not easy to win every single game when there's a massive target on your back.

“I think the group deserves a certain amount of credit. Other than the Westmeath game, I'd say there probably wasn't a game that we were any bigger than 1/3 maybe to win.

“There were a lot of potential banana skins across the courts for the last nine or 10 weeks."

Former Tyrone minor manager and senior selector Donnelly reckons the split season has played a major role in helping unite the Down squad, but he also believes an awful lot has been made of it too.

The rivalry at club level in Down in recent years has been intense among the top handful of clubs, including Kilcoo, Burren, Clonduff, Mayobridge and Carryduff with the depth of quality clubs appearing to be on the rise.

Managing that dynamic in an inter-county set-up can be tricky, but Down seem to have found a way.

Last year they went to the All-Ireland preliminary quarter-final, where they lost to Galway in Newry, and this season they’ve landed the Division Three title.

“I suppose there's been an awful lot made of that (uniting the county),” says Aghaloo club man Donnelly.

“I do think if you sent a drone into our training some night, the Kilcoo lads are mixing with the Burren lads, and the Carryduff lads are mixing with the Mayobridge lads and the Clonduff lads.

“There is a very, very happy group there. They are very cohesive and we are all very, very proud club men.

“Conor (Laverty) is no different than anybody else and we all want to represent our clubs to the very, very best of our ability."

Mayobridge double Championship winning manager Donnelly says Down have made a big effort to spend more time together as a group.

“We have done an awful lot of that,” he continued. “There was the team holiday last year after the Tailteann Cup. We were in Portugal with the group this year.

“When we have had big league games away, we have tried to stay over and just spending time together is massive. Lads get to know each other in a different environment.

“You know, ‘That fella that was cutting the dung out of me in a challenge game last year, he is not a bad fella!’

“Or me and him have the same desires, the same things we are into or like the same music. You are just trying to find a common ground as people.”

Tyrone man Donnelly - a former Derry minor and under 20 manager, who led St. Ronan’s Lurgan to a Hogan Cup in 2018 as joint manager - says that trust among players is vital to progressing.

“It is huge now because you have to have that,” he continued. “The All-Blacks used to talk about bone deep trust.

“If I am making a massive effort to leave my youngsters at home to be at training for half six, if he (another player) says he is working late and he can't get out of it, I have to be able to trust him, that he is telling the truth.

“Maybe that is what being part of a group that can work together and be cohesive and trust each other is about.

“We are lucky at the minute that we definitely have a group of lads that want to do that, because for a while playing for Down certainly wasn't deemed as important as it should have been.

“It doesn't matter whether you are playing for Kilkenny footballers, Down footballers, Kerry or Donegal, or the Limerick hurlers.

“Playing at inter-county level is a massive honour and it is one that shouldn't be diluted or made little of.”