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.