Former Down star Danny Hughes says that it shouldn’t require Conor Laverty’s appointment for Kilcoo players to commit to the county.
Having reportedly been close to taking the job with Jim McGuinness on his management ticket last year, Laverty has now been installed as James McCartan’s successor and will combine it with the role of Down under-20 manager, which he has held for the past two years.
Still highly active as a player, he captained Kilcoo to the All-Ireland title earlier this year but the club’s representation on the county panel was sparse, with only Niall Kane and Ryan McEvoy featuring in the Ulster Championship defeat to Monaghan.
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A few days after that game, Kilcoo’s Eugene Branagan said that he had “no ambition to play for Down” as he picked up the Player of the Year award for the club championship and cited the lack of a “winning mentality” as to why more players from the club weren’t involved with the county.
The assumption will be that Laverty will be able to entice more of his clubmates into the county set-up than his predecessors could manage but Hughes, who played alongside him when Down reached the 2010 All-Ireland final, insists that it shouldn’t matter who the manager is.
“It shouldn’t,” he said. “It really shouldn’t and isolated opinions on people, if they wanted to play in the past or who was committing and who wasn’t committing, are largely irrelevant.
“If you’re asked to play for any manager, no matter who it is - if it’s the devil himself - my love for my county negates anything else and I think personality-wise or clubs-wise or any politics, you always go on and represent your county.
“Conor Laverty is going to find himself in the same boat whether it’s political stuff that he has to deal with or anything else.
“If you’re asked to go and play for your county you should be very honoured and privileged and you should be going no matter who it is.
