FORMER Down star and manager Ross Carr fears there may be "dark times ahead" for his county no matter who succeeds James McCartan Jr as senior football boss.
Kilcoo man Conor Laverty is a leading contender to step up but Carr insists that the problems in the Mourne County run much deeper and wider than merely who is the man in that role.
Down were demoted to Division Three earlier this year, leading to their involvement in the second tier Tailteann Cup this summer after their exit from the Ulster Championship.
The Clonduff clubman is concerned that they might even drop down the league ladder, into the bottom section:
"My fear is that it's maybe not as bad as it can be; it can get worse. There is another division you can go to. Look at the Division Three teams next year: two that were in the Tailteann Cup Final [Westmeath and Cavan], you've Fermanagh and Antrim, Tipperary, Longford, and Offaly. We went down with Offaly – but Offaly beat us in Newry. It's gonna be a scrap every single game."
Down only avoided defeat once in 11 senior competitive games this year, a draw away to Meath in round three of the League. The Mournemen lost both their McKenna Cup matches, to Donegal and Antrim, their other six matches in Division Two, and then suffered Champions defeats to Monaghan and Cavan.
"It's tough times for Down," said Carr. "There's not one quick fix in any of this and this just didn't happen overnight.
"When water hits a rock, it's not one drop that breaks the rock, it's a constant erosion. I think this is years upon years of just not being good enough in a whole lot of areas."
Carr, who was in charge of the seniors for three seasons, 2007 to 2009, had been part of the county's fundraising body, but even that has stalled:
"Initially, when I was asked to get involved with Club Down there were certain plans - but things have stagnated there as well."
As for the football side of things, he admitted: "I don't know what has been done. I'm not privy to what's going on…
"There's huge things that have to change in Down and I don't have all the answers.
"People might remark 'It's alright for you to say there's a problem, why don't you just come up with solutions?' But when you don't know what all the problems are, you can't come up with the solutions.
"It's clear that there have to be problems in that, over the last four or five years, we are not competitive.
"Over the last six or seven, well, over the last maybe 6,7, 8 years, apart from one or two performances, we are not competitive."
Carr is certainly not pointing the finger at former team-mate McCartan – who led Down to the All-Ireland Final of 2010 in his first spell in charge.
Nor does he blame the predecessors of 'Wee James', namely Paddy Tally, the late Eamonn Burns, or Jim McCorry:
"If you look at it logically, take all the fluff out of it take all the emotion out of it, if your senior team is a product of what the production line is, and that production line isn't fit for purpose, then the end result isn't going to be fit for purpose.
"Our U20s, U17s, development squads have not been good enough. Take away the [Ulster] Championship won a couple of years ago by the under-20s - that was in a freak season. Yes, it was great to win it, but that's not going to fix the issues because that's a one-off.
"The U17s and the development squads, they're not breaking any Delft, so why would all of a sudden your seniors regardless of who the manager of the team is?"
Down's scarcity of underage success over the past couple of decades is, according to Carr, "an indictment on the people who are running Down football. It's shocking. It wouldn't matter who takes the senior management – if that's not fixed then there are some dark times ahead."
Carr is annoyed that the input of some former playing greats – including the All-Ireland winning captains of 1991 and 1994 – was not acted upon by the Down County Board:
"There was a committee of DJ Kane, Greg Blaney, and Paddy O'Rourke and a number of others - PJ McGee, I think – five or six years ago, who were asked to come up with a strategy. And they did come up with a strategy, based on a lot of research. There was a lot of excellence around the table.
"Because it didn't suit, or it was going to make life awkward for some administrators, it was put in the waste-bin."
In Carr's estimation, Down are now at least seven years behind the leading teams in Gaelic football as a consequence of such inaction:
"So we've wasted five or six years. These lads are in their late 50s and early 60s, it's not that they're going to get anything out of it.
"They felt that there were areas which needed to be addressed and they were quite willing to put their time and effort into it, but they kept hitting a brick wall.
"The only thing that can be quite categorically stated is we're in a worse place than we were.
"It's not as if you stay in the same place. You don't stay. The gap gets further and further and further. Five or six years ago we might have been two or three years behind the pack; now we're seven to 10 years behind the pack. And if nothing's done in the next year or two, you're 10 to 12 years behind the pack.
"And all of a sudden, what you're looking at is where will Down football be in 15 to 20 years? To me, that is the worry."
