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INTERVIEW "IT IS INTERESTING, IT KEEPS YOU ON YOUR TOES. YOU'RE ALWAYS BUSY. I THINK WHEN YOU HAVE GAELIC, IT'S NEARLY THAT YOU HAVE TWO JOBS. IT'S TRYING TO FIND THE BALANCE BETWEEN IT, BUT I LOVE BOTH OF THEM," Images Left to Right: 1. Aoife Laverty of Down during the 2023 TG4 All-Ireland Ladies Junior Football Championship Final match between Down and Limerick at Croke Park. 2. Aoife Laverty of Down in action against Fiona Bradshaw of Limerick during the 2023 TG4 All-Ireland Ladies Junior Football Championship Final. 3. Aoife Laverty of Down celebrates after her side's victory in the 2023 TG4 All-Ireland Ladies Junior Football Championship Final match between Down and Limerick at Croke Park in Dublin. 4. Deborah Murphy of Limerick and Aoife Laverty of Down during the 2023 TG4 All-Ireland Ladies Junior Football Championship Final. 5. Ceire Nolan of Louth in action against Aoife Laverty of Derry during the TG4 All-Ireland Junior Championship Semi Final match Championship Final. land intermediate football champions with a convincing 6-16 to 1-10 success at the expense of Fermanagh on Jones' Road. Nine years before captaining the Mourne outfit to a third-tier title, Meghan Doherty played the final 14 minutes of this game. Orla Boyle was also a part of the Down full-back line for their All-Ireland victories in consecutive decades across two different grades and had a big part to play in ensuring that the West County Hotel Cup will be safely nestled in the province of Ulster over the winter months. Additionally, the aforementioned Mulven- na and fellow substitute Emily Martin also had All-Ireland intermediate medals from 2014 and added a second Celtic Cross to their collection. "You look towards Meghan for the leader- ship and she just really does everything for the team. She's the hardest trainer as well. I think when our heads went down when we were two points down, we kept calm and she was the leader of that. I think everyone had the mentality of keeping calm and trusting the process. Play our own game." Following their relegation at the end of the 2022 inter-county season, Down were hell-bent from the word go this year to reclaim their intermediate championship status for 2024. The return of Peter Lynch and Caoibhe Sloan as joint managers after a 12-month absence was also a massive boost for the squad, as was the appointment of former Down men's footballers Mark Poland and Kevin McKernan in key coaching roles. In the final season of their previous tenure in charge of the team – 2021 – Lynch and Sloan guided Down to the quarter-final stage of the TG4 All-Ireland Intermediate Football Championship. Having achieved their stated target for the year, Laverty believes they are now in a strong position to push forward in the second-tier. "I think that was the goal of the whole season. We could have been blindsided by it because we'll play where we have to play. That was always the goal. We knew that we were an intermediate team, but we had to go show it and I think we did. "Definitely, this will push us on. We're not happy with the standard that we're at. We'll keep pushing until we're at our best. I think even throughout the year we haven't had a great game throughout. I think we'll just keep striving and see how we get on in intermediate, but hopefully we'll keep going. Keep striving." A graduate from Ulster University Jordan- stown, Laverty (who plays her club football in Down with Bredagh, but previously represented Derry's Steelstown Brian Ógs) currently works as a speech and language therapist in Belfast. Striking a balance between her job and her ladies football commitments can be dif- ficult at times, but Laverty is happy with how things are going both on and off the pitch and sees no reason why that should change moving into 2024. www.ladiesgaelic.ie | AUTUMN 2023 | 25