No let up in Kilcoo veteran Laverty’s love for the game
WITHIN a couple of hours of Kilcoo captain Conor Laverty winning his eighth county medal, he was back under the shadow of the Mourne Mountains with six team-mates.
Hardly anything unusual about that – given that homecomings are part and parcel of winning county finals – but this was no improvised-stage affair, instead they were back out on the Eoghan Rua pitch in Kilcoo, preparing for their next challenge.
Laverty is not only the veteran corner-forward on the Kilcoo senior team, he also happens to be the manager of the minor team that won this year’s Down championship and who have already set their sights on Ulster.
For Laverty, going straight back out on the pitch with the minors – six of whom are involved with the seniors was no sacrifice.
‘We have a great understanding with the senior management and work very closely with them,’ he explains.
‘The boys were fully focused on the senior that week but then we needed to switch very quickly because there are six minors on the senior squad. There was no one missing because nobody misses training here.’
Sometimes that line about how the game can be an obsession to some feels forced – with Laverty it’s an under-sell.
He started coaching teams when he was 16, helping the Kilcoo Under 12s to win a county title and he has never stopped since.
‘It is just something that I enjoyed and I feel it is very important for current players and for past players to go back and give something to the underage because somebody had done it for us. It is important for us to do it for the next generation.
‘A number of the lads I have taken at different age groups are still playing with me,’ adds the 34-year-old.
For how much longer that will be the case is open to question. He has already been signed up by Seamus ‘Banty’ McEnaney as Monaghan coach for next season, which might seem a big step up from the Kilcoo minors, but it is not as steep as it looks.
Coaching and developing footballers is his profession as well as his passion and he has been the GAA Development Officer in Trinity College for the past nine years, so in many ways working with elite adult players is a natural progress, even if it was a call out of the blue.
‘I didn’t know Banty. He just contacted me and we had a chat about it and then we talked a few times more. He is a very passionate and driven man and somebody that I would have liked to have worked with,’ says Laverty. ‘But that has not kicked in yet as I’m fully focussed on Kilcoo at the moment and will be until it’s over. And because our minors won the Down Championship, they are in the Ulster series now which starts in December so that comes next.’
That is not even the half of it. He is father to four young sons, aged from eight down to one, and commutes daily from Kilcoo to Dublin.
And yet his appetite for the game has hardly dulled. The range of experiences it has offered him as a player, coach, manager and administrator have been rich enough to keep him hooked.
Going from a rural landscape – Kilcoo is 18 miles east of Newry – where Gaelic football is the only show in town to a college, where it has traditionally struggled for oxygen, is an opportunity not afforded to everyone.
‘It is a different kind of challenge to come from a rural setting where Gaelic games is the top sport to a large third level institution where it would not be so important.
‘Maybe it took me a wee while to adjust to the GAA not being number one and not being the be-all and endall. But we are making good strides and have a lot of good structures in place and we are pushing hard.’
And they are pushing even harder at home. His desire to win with Kilcoo is as sharp as it has ever been, but then the club has always come first.
He brought the curtain down on his inter-county playing career four years ago – one which brought less glory than perhaps his talent deserved.
The highlights reel is a short one. He came off the bench in the one-point defeat to Cork in the 2010 All-Ireland final and in 2012 he played in an Ulster decider in which Down were heavily beaten by Donegal.
Seven years on, and it is a Donegal team – Leo McLoone and Anthony Thompson on the Naomh Conaill side also provide a link with that day – that stand between him and probably a final shot at winning an Ulster medal.
‘I didn’t get a chance to watch their win over Clontibret but just reading about their three games against Gaobh Dobhair, any team that beats the current Ulster champions automatically put themselves out there as favourites for the competition.
‘They are an extremely good side when you look at some of the quality of the players in their team, they will be extremely difficult to beat,’ admits Laverty.
Naomh Conaill’s defensive gameplan and counter-attacking style draws another parallel with that 2012 Ulster final.
‘They set up extremely well. It is just how we adapt to that. That is the way football has gone. That is our challenge.’
One, as ever, he will be up for.