Tommy Martin: Down defeat of Donegal shows the cost of belief in football
Down manager Conor Laverty signs a jersey for a Donegal supporter. Pic: Ramsey Cardy/Sportsfile
One consolation for Donegal people after last Sunday's Ulster Championship quarter-final defeat to Down was the sheer effort it clearly took on the part of the opposition.
We know this because their manager, Conor Laverty, told us all about it. The bit about the RTÉ graphic showing Donegal’s Ulster semi-final fixture against Armagh or Tyrone, the first instance of a screensaver being pinned on the dressing room wall.
The bit about taking the team down to play Kerry in a challenge match a week previously, a high-stakes gambit that could have backfired had the Kingdom handed them a paddling (Jack O’Connor playing 4D chess again, clearly).
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But what stood out to me was Laverty’s claim that the Mournemen had spent the previous 10 days together, building for the big game in Letterkenny. Ten days is a long time to spend with the same people doing the same thing, as anyone who has had a family holiday with small children will tell you.
Even if the thing you are supposed to be doing is enjoyable, after 10 days you’ve had enough. You may be lazing by a pool in Acapulco, sipping cool drinks in the shade of a palm tree, the cares of the world seeming a million miles away, but after 10 days, you’re like “No Juanita, I don’t want another margherita goddammit! Do you even know how long it’s going to take me to clear my inbox?”
So, imagine what it’s like to spend 10 consecutive days running up and down training fields, going through kickout drills and tackle boxes, watching frame-by-frame analysis of the way Jason McGee picks his nose. I suspect at least some of the enthusiasm the Down players displayed for the task in hand came from the prospect that they might get a day off if they behaved themselves.
None of this is to take away from the brilliance of the Down performance, which managed to take a sledgehammer to a host of Jim McGuinness Ulster Championship-based records. In 21 previous games in the northern quagmire, a McGuinness-managed Donegal had only lost once, the 2013 Ulster final against Monaghan.
Not only that, as pointed out by Cahair O’Kane of the , they’d only conceded four goals in total in those games prior to conceding three in an afternoon last Sunday. One is put in mind of Jeffrey ‘The Dude’ Lebowski, from the Coen Brothers movie The Big Lebowski, and his annoyance at the interlopers who have peed on his rug: that Donegal defensive record really tied the room together.
Amazingly, after 10 whole days of whatever hell Laverty had put his men through to get them into the position where they could beat the reigning two-time Ulster champions on their own patch, it turns they didn’t even really believe they could do it until halfway through the match.
Again, we know this because Laverty told us. “I had said to them on Thursday night [I guess that’s what, day seven of Down Ulster Championship boot camp?] that ‘I don’t think you are just fully with me in the belief yet, but before Sunday morning, you are going to believe in the way that this management team believes in you’.
“I said at half-time, ‘Do you fully believe me now? Do you fully believe what this management team believes?’ And you could see it bouncing in their eyes.”
I suspect Laverty would have fared well as a training instructor in the Japanese air force during World War Two, convincing mild-mannered Okinawan office clerks that it would be a great idea to fly a fighter plane into an American aircraft carrier, a not entirely inappropriate metaphor for your average Ulster championship encounter.
We have no reason to doubt that all this believing was happening just as the Down boss described, but there must also have been a small amount on the players behalf of trying to remember what their family’s faces looked like after the long stretch they’d just put in as inmates of Camp Laverty.
Yet, in pulling off one of the biggest shocks in recent GAA championship history, Down provided another reminder of just how much bother these guys go to for our viewing pleasure every summer, and for no worldly reward. Sure, the life of an intercounty star has its benefits – the admiration of your peers; the use of a tidy plug-in hybrid; a friendly line of questioning at a job interview; a few more Tinder swipes going your way – but in general it is an awful lot of effort for gains that are purely spiritual.
Naturally there are plenty of young lads who look at this bill of goods and say no thank you. You could make up a pretty decent All Star selection of guys who’ve decided not to go in with the county, what with work and wanting to live a normal human existence and everything.
But in the times we live in, it is important to cherish those that do decide to make effort, because it may not always be that way. This week I read a quote from the American movie producer and director Joe Russo, who predicted that within two years, you would be able to come home from a rough day at work and ask AI to create a ninety-minute romcom starring yourself and Marilyn Monroe.
Naturally, the potential here stretches beyond the realms of pervy self-indulgence. Why not ask AI to generate a full-length video of an All-Ireland final against Dublin where you score 2-8 from play and lift the Sam Maguire on the steps of the Hogan Stand, before boarding your nearby X-Wing fighter along with your loving wife, 1980s Wendy James from Transvision Vamp, and head back to your home on a tropical beach planet in the Andromeda galaxy? A dystopian prospect, maybe, but a lot easier than 10 days with Conor Laverty.
Of more pressing relevance, Laverty’s openness tells us a lot about how we should view the form and fortunes of this year’s All-Ireland contenders. Why were Donegal so good against Kerry and so off colour against Down? How were Meath turfed out of Leinster by Westmeath after looking so impressive in their league promotion campaign? How could Galway find themselves with little old Leitrim nibbling at their tail well into the latter stages of their Connacht semi-final?
It seems clear that the amount of effort that is required nowadays for these guys to be really good for any length of time is physically and emotionally unsustainable. It’s why – screensaver alert – Down will surely struggle to maintain the same level of performance when they take on Armagh in Sunday’s semi-final. It’s why one of Kerry’s great strengths, borne of years of experience, has been timing their preparations to hit peak form on All-Ireland final day.
It’s why Donegal might actually be better off not having to put themselves through two more UFC title bout-type affairs in Ulster if they have aspirations to hit their best form again in July. It’s why whoever comes out on top at the end of it all will have had, as Kerry did last year, at least one day when it looks like they aren’t putting in any effort at all.
Now excuse me, it’s just getting to the bit where Marilyn plucks up the nerve to ask me out on a date.
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