Donegal 1-21 Down 3-21: ‘I was roaring at them’ – Conor Laverty joyous as Mournemen stun Ulster holders

Toppling Donegal, of course, took meticulous preparation. Laverty had planned for the holders’ influential forward Michael Langan’s absence – which the Down camp got wind of during the week – and drilled his players on how to stop the Donegal attack.

“We looked at Donegal and we worked on it and we studied them in great detail, particularly their forward play,” explained Laverty.

“But we concentrated on ourselves an awful lot. I think we approached this game in a different manner than we approached last year and how we approached Armagh in the previous campaign, albeit it’s a different game now.

“We probably felt last year we came with a more frustration game to Donegal and trying to bring them down the straight. But the plan today was to get up and to get at it nice and early and really test them and express ourselves. The word we’ve used all week is belief.”

To steel his players for a top-level championship test, Laverty took them as far as Killarney for a challenge game against Kerry.

As Laverty explained, the Kingdom “don’t play too many challenge matches”, but when the opportunity arose, he was keen to thrust his players into a tussle with a championship juggernaut.

“It worked for the [Down under] 20s in my first year. We played Kerry, we played Dublin, we played the best teams in the country,” he said.

“If we’re going to play Donegal today, and I can say to these lads, after 35 or odd minutes in a game, that we’re doing and executing things that we want to do.

“I understand people want to say Donegal and Kerry played different kind of styles, but for pressure on kick-outs and for zonal presses on kick-outs, it was a great workout.”

Written off in many quarters, Down needn’t have looked far for motivation, but Laverty also revealed he saved a graphic of the Ulster Championship draw that had Donegal facing either Tyrone or Armagh in the semi-finals as his phone screensaver as a reminder of how his team had been overlooked.

“Three weeks, and I’ve looked at it every day,” he said, adding that he showed it to his players on Thursday.