Deegan wants Down to take that leap again

CONOR DEEGAN doesn’t remember the exact year. It might have been 1989 or maybe the season after. Whenever, it was a game played in the Marshes and he recalls it as the catalyst for Down’s All-Ireland successes in the 1990s.

Sean Boylan’s Meath had been the rock on which many a county’s ambitions had ran aground in the 1980s but they were the visitors that day and they would unwittingly provide the platform for the Ulster men’s re-emergence.

It was Mickey Linden who instigated the great leap forward. To anyone who saw the man play, that will be no surprise. The real shock came in the fact that it was Linden’s mouth and not his feet that started the revolution.

Deegan describes Linden as “one of the quietest and nicest men you could meet” but the forward let loose with the kind of language that would make a sailor blush in the dressing-room that day.

“Mickey was having a real hard time of it,” says Deegan who still chuckles at the memory of Linden’s unlikely verbals. “It must have been Bobby O’Malley or Mick Lyons who was on him and they spent the whole day just on his back and he laid into our own defenders afterwards.

“I won’t repeat the words he used but he basically said that he was getting the s*** hammered out of him up the other end and every time he looked back there we were standing off our men. We changed after that. We got tougher.”

Down won a first Ulster title in ten years in 1991 and a first All-Ireland in 23 that September. They repeated the trick three years later when DJ Kane emulated Paddy O’Rourke byaccepting the Anglo-Celt and Sam Maguire Cups.

Down supporters will be praying for some parallels in the years to come because Deegan’s story of his county’s resurrection sounds strikingly familiar to anyone who has followed their fortunes this year.

Back then, Down were top-heavy with class forwards like Linden, James McCartan and Greg Blaney and this year’s vintage is similarly weighted in the attacker’s favour with Benny Coulter, Marty Clarke and company.

McCartan, in his first year as manager, admitted that the priority for Down in this year’s National League campaign was that their defence would no longer be held up for “ridicule” by all and sundry, a war-cry that carried echoes of Meath and the Marshes from 20 years earlier.

Run a finger through Down’s results in recent seasons and there have been days when they have scored 17 points but conceded 18, managed 16 and let in 20, recorded 18 and still lost by four.

The nadir came in 2008 when they conceded an average of almost 16 points a game. That improved hugely last year and the work has continued in McCartan’s first term with the average reduced to just over a dozen per 70 minutes.

“It had to change,” says Deegan. “We have always believed in Down that we could produce footballers with a bit of swagger about them. Footballers, in the real sense of the word. The defence has been a different story.

“James obviously feels that you can’t play that lovely, sexy football anymore and he’s right. Look at Tyrone. Their entire game is built on their defence. Dublin as well. They went even further that way this year.

“I know a lot of people weren’t all that happy about it. You go back to Pat Spillane giving out about it a few years ago but his own county have done it. They have adapted. Anyone with cop-on has adapted.”

Another link between Down now and in the early 90s can be found in the men stationed at full-back. Deegan was that soldier under Pete McGrath – and he earned an All Star for his efforts – while Dan Gordon has been drafted back for sentry duty to the edge of the square by McCartan.

Both offer security and a bulwark against aerial assaults. Other aspects to the two eras could hardly be more different. In Deegan’s day, players squared off against each other and marked their man regardless of where he might roam.

Not anymore.

“It is just a different mentality now. The midfield is dropping back to help, the wing-forwards as well. You have a lovely player like Marty Clarke there, too, coming back and helping his defenders when he doesn’t have the ball.

“The thing is, they are still worth watching. They break at pace, unlike Dublin who were so ponderous with the ball. Down are sending in long diagonal balls and people are breaking from the back at speed to support the lads up front. James has found a really good balance.”

Yet, according to Deegan, it is one that still tilts slightly in their forwards’ favour. McCartan has been at his post less than a year and it will take longer than one season to iron out the kinks that had tripped them up for so long.

Reaching this far has allowed McCartan to keep the lab open and continue with his experiment, but Kildare will test Down’s embryonic sturdiness to it’s limits tomorrow afternoon.

Armagh and Tyrone have already cracked the Mourne code this season and Kieran McGeeney’s side – supremely fit, athletic and moulded to their manager’s will – shares many of those same genetic traits.

“I fancied Kildare five or six weeks back. I really like the way McGeeney has them set up. They are rattling off big scores but Down won’t be afraid of them. Down teams are always dangerous when they get on a roll.

“They have beaten Kerry and can you imagine what people would have been saying about Kildare if that had been them? Or Dublin? They would have been made favourites for the All-Ireland there and then.”

Photo: Conor Deegan of Down and Pat Gilroy of Dublin clash as they contest a loose ball in the 1994 All-Ireland final. Picture: INPHO