By Shaun Casey

THREE wins on the trot sees Conor Laverty’s Down sit at the top of the table in Division Three, but they won’t be taking their foot off the gas when they travel to Wexford in round four.

They’ve beaten Clare, Limerick and Westmeath by five, one and three points respectively. Wexford sit in second place, along with Westmeath, and tasted defeat for the first time this season last weekend against Limerick.

“A lot of people might have been saying in this division there were certain teams favourites to go up, but whenever I was looking at it some of these teams have been around for a long time, they’re extremely well coached and it’s winter football,” said Laverty.

“There’s no getting away from teams. There’s no stretching it out. If you look across all the divisions, there are very few teams running away with it. It’s more coming down to the wire and the last 10 minutes.”

The Mourne men certainly aren’t taking promotion for granted, even though they’re in a brilliant position to make an immediate return to Division Two.

Last season, Down were unfortunate to fall out of the second tier, but with promotion on the line this time around, every small detail matters going forward.

“We’ve got ourselves in a good position with three wins but there’s a long way to go and there’s a lot of football left to be played. It’s toing and froing in this division like it is in all of the divisions but we’re just worrying about ourselves, getting our own performance right.

“We saw last week things that work well for us, and we’ve got a lot of learnings from tonight that we have to go away and work on to come back stronger. That’s what league football is about. Everyone wants to play in championship football,” he added.

“League is probably a bit more important for some teams because of the consequences for Tailteann Cup and Sam Maguire football so it’s higher stakes for our division.

“It’s totally different from last year where if you pick up a defeat you just rally the troops and you were able to go at it again. But with the margin for error when you’re looking for promotion so small, you’re attention to detail has to be of the highest degree all the time.”