Technically, Odhran Murdock failed at Croke Park.
He was feted as the Man of the Match and helped himself to three terrific points from play but manager Conor Laverty had set him an even higher personal target.
“I challenged him to get four points, he didn’t get that so we’ll have to see,” grinned Laverty.
There’ll be no rebukes for the Burren man, of course, but it does indicate the levels that he and the team’s talented core of young players have and will continue to be pushed to by their ambitious manager.
Murdock was one of six players from Down’s Ulster U-20 final winning team of 2021 - Ryan Magill, Paddy McCarthy, Shealan Johnston, Danny Magill and John McGovern were the others - that featured in Saturday’s Croke Park win. Eamonn Brown, who also started that U-20 final, was an unused sub this time.
“It’s a very young panel, a very young squad,” noted Laverty. “A lot of these lads had never won any silverware at senior level so I think that was very, very important to do.”
Where they go from here will make for intriguing viewing.
“Those former U-20s are probably a wee bit different in terms of mindset, they have that sort of winning mentality,” said Laverty. “It was good to see some of those younger boys really grab hold of the game whenever it was in the melting pot.”
In the light of Armagh’s run to the All-Ireland final, Down’s one-point Ulster semi-final loss to their neighbours back in April is looking increasingly impressive with each passing week. Winning the Tailteann Cup now means they will have a free pass to go hard at next year’s Ulster and Division 2 campaigns, their Sam Maguire Cup status assured.
“I can’t say winning the Tailteann Cup was the objective at the start of this year because we had real ambitions of getting to an Ulster final and competing for the Sam Maguire Cup this year but after the Armagh game we refocused together, we took a few weeks off and we decided we were going to give this competition everything we had,” said Laverty.
“Going into Division 2 next year, the pressure of not knowing if you had Sam Maguire Cup football status, looking over your shoulder all the time and waiting on provincial draws and seeing how they would work out, and wondering were you going to have Sam Maguire football, that’s all gone. So we’re over the moon.”
To think that Down failed to win a single game in all competitions just two years ago. Under Laverty they have won 27 of their 37 competitive matches and have broken the county’s finals hoodoo. They’d lost a dozen league and Championship finals in a row before Saturday. No wonder then that Laverty’s very first comment afterwards was to gently chide those in the media who’d highlighted that record.
That 12-game record, stretching from Down’s 1996 Ulster final defeat to Tyrone to this season’s Division 3 final loss to Westmeath, didn’t account for club activity. Laverty himself was joint captain of the Kilcoo team that won the All-Ireland club title at Croke Park in early 2022, scoring three points.
“I’ve had brilliant memories in this place, the best memories of my life are from here and I said to the players that I just really hoped they could create their own memories,” he said.
“Some of the lads have young children, I wanted them to create memories for their own families, that whenever they come here in years to come, as older players or parents, that they can look back and say, ‘Remember the day we went up those steps?’ I think that’s really important. As a manager, that’s all you want to do. You want to help players, it’s not about me or the management team. We don’t need the praise. All we want to do is facilitate the lads to be the best they can be and give them the best opportunity they can to put medals in their pockets.”
The sense beforehand was that while Laois wanted to win the Tailteann Cup, Down needed to, particularly after last year’s loss to Meath and with their finals record in mind. Just reaching the final was a surprise for Laois who trailed New York by a point with less than 20 minutes of their preliminary quarter-final to go. They weren’t expected to beat Kildare in the quarter-finals either and only last year conceded 8-16 to Down at the semi-final stage.
“Proud that the team, even though we weren’t firing all over the pitch, were still able to claw ourselves into a position where we could maybe have stolen it in the end,” said Laois manager Justin McNulty. “It would have been very much against the run of play because Down were dominant for periods in terms of their ability to score freely.
“So for us to take the scoring damage that we took, and to still be alive like we were, I think that’s a testament to the character of the fellas. But still, we’re hugely disappointed that we didn’t get a few of those big scores. When it hit full-time, injury time, it was there for us and we didn’t nail them.”
McNulty’s sense is that this is just the beginning for this Laois group. In the first season of his second stint as manager, he also secured promotion to Division 3.
“Ross Munnelly (selector) was talking in the dressing-room and talking about the potential of the group,” said McNulty. “We’re probably only at, as Ross said, about 60 percent of the potential of where this group could be at. That’s where we have to see huge areas for improvement and demand more of ourselves.
“Because that performance wasn’t really good enough to win a final. You don’t win finals when you only score 2-6.”