“We want be playing in Sam Maguire football”: Donnelly

DOWN made the perfect start to their Division Three promotion push last weekend with a home win over Clare and will look to go two from two against Limerick on Saturday, which won’t be easy, says coach Mickey Donnelly.

The Mourne men trailed by five points at half time of their league opener but came good in the second period to record a ten-point turnaround and pick up the two points on offer on home turf. Promotion will give Down a good chance of returning to the All-Ireland series depending on how the provincial competitions pan out.

Limerick, who gained promotion by winning the Division Four league title last year and competing in the Tailteann Cup final, were held to a 1-10 to 0-13 draw away to Laois in their first-round clash.

“There’s issues with it, we’re going down on Friday, it’s not just simple,” said Donnelly of this weekend’s long journey down to Munster.

“You have to prepare properly, and we’ll be going down to Limerick on Friday afternoon with a plan and there’s no easy games.”

Kick-starting the season with a win was “vitally important” said Donnelly as the men in red and black target an immediate return to Division Two following their relegation last season.

Pat Havern was the top scorer for Conor Laverty’s men, finishing the evening with 0-6, while roaming midfielder Odhrán Murdock (1-2) and John McGeough (1-1) both bagged goals in the 2-19 to 2-14 triumph.

Barry O’Hagan returned to competitive action following back-to-back ACL injuries and emerged as a second-half substitute while Down also await the return of Liam Kerr, who took a year out in 2025 but is back in the fold this season.

“It’s vitally important, we want to get out of this division, and we want to be back playing in the top two tiers of league football. We want be playing in Sam Maguire football, we’re not making any apologies for saying that,” Donnelly added.

“But ultimately, people talk about promotion. We knew Clare have been in a number of Munster finals, they’ve been perennially in the All-Ireland series over the last three years and they have quality.

“If you think of (Stephen) Ryan to Maurice Doherty to (Brian) McNamara, (Aaron) Griffin, (Mark) McInerney up the field, they have bloody good players. We prepared really well and on reflection, while there were a lot of mistakes and a lot of errors, we’ll look back on this game and think we didn’t play too badly.”