Conor Laverty was at a loss to explain Down’s second half meltdown in the Tailteann Cup final.

The Mournemen had one hand on the cup when they led by 2-10 to 0-4 at half-time, but suffered a nightmare second half collapse against Wicklow which Laverty described as a ‘disaster’.

“The stats don’t lie there,” he told reporters in the Croke Park media room.

“But our execution after that...like, we were over our target on our numbers of what we wanted to achieve on our own kick-out.

“We’d said we didn’t want to go into contact [because] we knew Barry Tiernan has a trend of being hard on steps. We knew that coming into the game, we’d spoken about that and ah, look, I thought it was maybe moments, and in those moments we just lacked that bit of composure in the final third, just to get the scoreboard ticking over and to just keep that distance whenever they were coming at us.

“And they were always going to come because they’d done the same against Offaly and with the new rules and the breeze, but take nothing away from Wicklow, the heart and courage they have played with over this season has been huge.”

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