All-Ireland Club Football Championship Final

Kilcoo (Down) v Corofin (Galway)

Sunday, Croke Park, 4pm

FOR 13 long seconds Conor Laverty considers his answer when the question “do you believe you can win it’ is put to him.

Thirteen seconds is a lot of dead air. The Kilcoo maestro may only need a split-second to do the right thing on the pitch, but he was going to take his time to make sure he said the correct thing off it.

“We’re going to Croke Park to get a performance that will do this team and club justice,” said the player. “If we do that we hope that we will come out on the right end of the result.”

If he had been within earshot then his manager Mickey Moran would have nodded approvingly. The clever answer – nothing there to serve as motivation for their opponents Corofin.

The player’s admiration for the Galway outfit is most definitely genuine though. The Monaghan coach is a real student of the game and has watched admiringly as they have swept all before them in recent times.

“Corofin are possibly the best club side ever,” he said.

“They’re going for three in-a-row and they’re a fantastic team. We’re just delighted to be in this position to be challenging ourselves against one of the best teams in Ireland.

“They’re up there and they’re aiming to be the best club team ever by going for three in-a-row.

“There have been great teams down through the years, the Cross teams, the Dublin teams have been fantastic, Nemo have a great tradition.

“Corofin are right up there. They have had two stints at it, one in the ‘90s and now they’re back again. That shows the work that is going on within their club.”

Similar is going on at Páirc Eoghan Rua with Laverty leading the way. The Trinity GAA officer has coached underage teams all the way up and managed the Kilcoo minors to a county title a few months ago.

He is setting the example for the future while he is also the heartbeat of the present.

While his early Kilcoo career usually kept him close to goal with his feints, jinks and scores terrorising defences, in recent times he has become more of a quarter-back, linking play and sweeping up danger.

Laverty’s scoring statistics this season back that up. He has failed to score in six of their 10 championship games and 1-3 of his 1-7 tally came in the Down quarter-final replay win over Burren.

If anything though, his influence on the team has increased– and his final quarter performance against Ballyboden, when he played almost as an out-and-out defender, will probably be underrated in the grand scheme of things.

Laverty’s measured approach is understandable. He has been around long enough to know that things can change very, very quickly in the game.

A few years before he was born, the club was operating in Division Three in Down and it’s the supporters who travelled to the lesser known outposts of the Mourne county who are on his mind in the build up to Sunday’s encounter.

“That’s the dream of any young lad in Ireland growing up, to represent your club on the biggest stage.

“Probably the most important thing for me is our supporters, the men and women who have travelled the length and breadth of this country from we were no age, are getting their day.

“When Kilcoo were in Division Three and Four they were at every corner of every pitch in the county. They have supported us in the good days but even more so they have supported us in the bad days.

“They deserve their time to go to Croke Park in their club colours.

“Meeting different men the last few days, just passing them and knowing that man is a happy man because his club is going to play in Croke Park.”

And win or lose, Laverty knows that he can count on the Magpie supporters to make them feel proud.

“To me that is what the GAA is all about, those small rural places where the GAA is the heartbeat of the village and of the parish.

“It’s massive here, the football club is the centre of everything.

“Whenever it happens that everyone supports each other, should it be the wee girls out in the camogie or the ladies being in the championship final, everybody just gets a sense that you have to go and support because everyone backs each other to the hilt.”