'We have a talented bunch of players and we were just well below our standard', says Laverty

It was not the performance that anyone in red and black had hoped for, not least Down manager Conor Laverty, but results are all that matters in the championship and a 0-13 to 0-9 victory over Antrim at Pairc Esler on Saturday was enough to earn Down an Ulster semi-final meeting with Armagh in a couple of week's time.

​There were four points in it in the end and while the Mourne county made hard work of their task,they got the job done and will now face an impressive Armagh outfit who comfortably saw off Fermanagh at Brewster Park on Sunday.

Laverty spoke to the media after the game but struggled to show much enthusiasm despite the win, or find positives in a performance that will need to improve greatly next time out.“Whenever people talked about the Derry and the Dublin match, it was a great game for the neutral to watch – I'm sure there wouldn't have been too many neutrals impressed with that game now,” felt the manager.

"I thought that it was just a poor standard and it's not something that is acceptable I feel for the level of talent that we have in this team. Antrim set up with a deep block, defended narrow and we knew they were going to come with that and we put a lot of practice into how to deal with that. But as a group and me as manager, we have to find better ways of dealing with this.”A scuffle before the ball was even thrown in resulted in yellow cards for Down’s Odhran Murdock and Antrim’s Joseph Finnegan and Andy McEntee’s side were reduced to 14 in the third minute when Conor Hand was dealt a black card. But the worry of a scrappy game to come didn’t transpire as things settled for the most part – apart from another incident between backroom staff at half-time that led to an Antrim official being red carded.“Listen, it was a local derby. If I was a team coming to Newry and thought that this was a young Down team, I would have stepped it up too,” reasoned Laverty.

"Antrim were well within their rights to bring a wee bit of an edge to it. I thought at the start that this was going to leave fireworks throughout the game, but it wasn't long before the fireworks went out of it. I felt that we matched them physically quite well...there's many different words I would use for that. I'm very careful to use my words very very delicately,”

“It just wasn't the level of performance that this team aspires to get to. It's not the reason why I took the job. I feel that there's quality in Down. I feel that we have a talented bunch of players and we were just well below our standard there. That's just as honest as you can call it.“I just felt that we had areas to learn from Croke Park [in the Allianz League final defeat to Westmeath]. And we didn't execute and didn't deliver on that today again, which is disappointing. But listen, we're still in the hat. If you had said today that you would have came away with a win, you just would have taken it. The next day out is going to be a colossal battle.”

For full match report see this week’s Newry Reporter in shops Wednesday April 17.