The stark decline of the Mourne men highlights all that is wrong with football

‘There has to be a Down way of playing football, a way that reflects our tradition of style and flair. If we lose that we lose our soul – Down County secretary Seán Óg McAleer in December 2015.

LAST Sunday afternoon in Clones, Down football managed to lose its way, its soul and, for full measure, its good sense. The latter perished in a bizarre post match exchange as their manager Éamonn Burns briefed a huddle of journalists in the wake of the worst defeat in the county’s history.

‘Was this further evidence of the low level of confidence amoung the players?’ asked a reporter. ‘Confidence comes from winning games; we came here full of confidence,’ replied Burns.

It is 433 days and counting since Down last won a game in League or Championship, incorporating a run of 11 straight losses.

Burns has lost in all 10 attempts against intercounty opposition this season, with the average margin of defeat in national competition coming in at 10 points per game.

That he can still come out with a line like that can be seen as a slice of the nonsense coughed up weekly in the GAA’s post match mixed zone and served back to you sauced with absolute contempt.

Or alternatively, it can simply be viewed as the state of utter bewilderment that has fogged the mind of those charged with the care of Down football. Either way, it is not good.

Their 19-point defeat to Monaghan has sparked the annual wailing festival at the moon.

The great irony is that even though the Championship is virtually a Groundhog Day experience, we somehow manage to feign shock, outrage and disappointment when every morning we open the curtains to rain-filled gutters.

Of course, it has been brutal but exactly when was the last time that the annual bleeding of minnows from the provincial championships was deemed to be worth getting out of bed for?

So this week a poor team gets beaten out the gate and it is held up once more as further evidence of the state of the game and, in particular, the structure of the Championship.

The last healthy limb, Ulster, has become infected so amputation is the only job. Steady now. Ulster’s democracy has been notional in recent times as much as anything.

Armagh and Tyrone ruled uninterrupted for a dozen years, before being succeeded by the current Donegal/Monaghan coalition.

There is absolute merit in the calls for Championship reform, just as there is for a fairer distribution of resources, but neither can be peddled as silver bullets to shoot down the growing divide between the strong and those left behind.

It is important sometimes that we resist the temptation to squint so hard that we can’t see the tree from the forest.

Down football is where it is at not because of an imbalanced Championship system or just because it does not have a pot to sit on. It arrived here all on its own. Danny Hughes, who captained them to a place in the 2010 All-Ireland final, pointed out this week that the county had fallen 20 years behind the leading pack.

The evidence of that is there to see, not least in the lack of a centre of excellence which might go some way to explain why Down’s production line has all but stalled. Strategic planning which has been a constant challenge for their county board, is also an issue.

When James McCartan exhausted himself after squeezing for six years what he could from such modest resources, Tony McEntee arrived gift-wrapped at their door. The word is that they baulked at the budget required to take charge of the team, and while it can be argued that the spend was too steep for a board that operates within such tight resources; the reality is that they needed to dig deep.

All-Ireland winning management teams are not going to come knocking on Down’s door anytime some, in fact it is unlikely if anyone will.

Last year, they rid themselves of Jim McCorry after one-season

despite the Armagh native taking them back to Division 1.

Appointed on a three-year term, he faced a confidence vote which he won by just two votes, and revealed afterwards that he has been ‘challenged’ by members of the board’s executive after they lost to Wexford.

His position untenable, he walked in August and it still took the Down board until November to ratify Burns as his successor.

In some ways, it is impossible not to feel for Burns who answered a call out of loyalty but has not been able to engender that quality in others

Key players have opted out from the start, most notably Conor Laverty, while Caolan Mooney, who made his displeasure of McCorry’s treatment well known, walked mid-League.

The expected return of experienced trio Benny Coulter, Dan Gordon and Marty Clarke – all of whom McCorry had received a commitment from – never materialised.

But Burns has hardly helped himself. An attack last Sunday that has averaged less than 10 points a game stayed true to type, while the best forward in the county, Clarke, watched on from the vantage point of a TV studio.

Battling with Addison’s disease, there is no guarantee – even though his Sigerson Cup form for Queens was promising – that he would have responded to an invite, but one never came.

‘It would have been nice to get a phone call,’ he told BBC viewers. It would also have made sense. But, then, that’s in short supply these days.