Ulster SFC/Down v Cavan: Tom Humphriesmeets former red and black star Ross Carr, now leading a side whose fortunes are more often in the red than the black

Ross Carr and DJ Kane. In one sense it seems fitting that the old friends should wind up as managers of the Down football team having been its heart and its blade for so long. In another way it's just plain strange.

They were good, but they were rogues too. There's a vivid memory of the pair of them back in the mid-90s on a chill February night in Ballykinlar, veterans then with their second All-Ireland medals still warm in their pockets. Their breath made clouds in the air as they spoke after training and offered to drive slowly on the windy, heavily soldiered roads back to Newry. The journalist could follow.

And the first turn out of Ballykinlar loomed and lo from each front window of the advance car came a cheery wave and the car heaved with the sound of great revving as Ross and DJ vanished into the night, ar nós na gaoithe. It was a time before mobile phones. No chance to call them denouncing them as the mischievous hoors they were.

As the most garrulous and articulate of a precociously bright Down team that played, on their day, the best football of the 90s, Carr and Kane didn't seem like short-odds bets to sign up for the drudgery of coaching and dealing with county boards. Yet tomorrow they take Down to Breffni Park to play Cavan in the Ulster championship. Kane, always the more combustible of the two, is consigned to the stands. Carr, always garrulous and affable, does the talking.

So what are a couple of smart guys like Ross Carr and DJ Kane doing running around with a team like this?

"All us old fellas! Listen, once you lose the limelight you get bored after a while! No such thing as bad publicity! You know we're more friends than former playing colleagues. If it was ever going to happen it wouldn't have happened to one without asking the other to get involved. You have to have a relationship outside of the football. It's good craic at the minute. You couldn't do it if you didn't enjoy it," says Carr.

You forget, of course, they are both scions of great Down footballing families and this is in their blood. Ross Carr's dad, Aidan, was a sub on the Down junior All-Ireland side of 1946. His uncle Barney trained the legendary Down team of the early 60s and he has a clatter of other uncles who wore the county colours at some stage or other through the days. When he discusses Down football he does so with a light learning. When you talk about the Ulster football revolution, Down it was who provided the vanguard in the 60s and again in the 90s. Why no follow-on from those All-Irelands of 1991 and 1994?

"After 1994, I think it's part of . . . I don't want to say tradition because that gives fellas a bag to carry, which isn't fair . . . but if you go down through the years here it has always been sporadic success. Apart from the 60s, we never attained the consistency levels that other counties do. In the 1990s we won two All-Irelands and two Ulster titles. Nothing in between. Nothing after. We're a hot-and-cold county. When we are hot we are good. When we are cold we are brutal."

It's jarring, though, to realise that the side who played such magical football in the first half , say, of the All-Ireland final of 1991 or the legendary first-round game against Derry in 1994 should have folded their tents and left behind a county which hasn't won a provincial title since 1994. Carr isn't as baffled as the outsider might be. He speaks with the candour that has been his trademark.

"People think Down are a championship team. I played 17 years and I have two championship medals. And two provincial championship medals. After 1994 I think - this is personally speaking - a few of us were growing old. Pete (McGrath) was loyal to us. A few of the young fellas coming in to the team, while they were young and good they weren't leaders. And when the leaders left there was nothing to carry on. The ability was there but the personality wasn't.

"There were good players around in 95 to 98 and they probably should have been given a run at it. A few of us had lost a bit of form, or maybe the edge wasn't there but we were still getting games. You can only say that looking back. When you are in the middle of it you want to play all the time.

"You think you have the drive but you are playing in games where you just knew that the person marking you it mattered more to him than it did to you. I felt there were too many of us in that situation. One thing that guarantees is failure."

Even allowing for all that there should have been a wave following on. All those kids who watched the homecomings at the Buttercrane in Newry, out to Clonduff and the football towns all the way to Castlewellan. Surely they aspired to imitate?

"After 94?" he says "It wasn't a county-board problem but they didn't have a bigger picture in mind. They didn't see a bigger picture, a situation where in three years we had two All-Irelands.

"Nobody saw the possible influence that would have not just on a minor or an under-21, but a 12-year-old or a 10-year-old, a primary-school kid.

"The administration at the time wasn't adequate. They were adequate as administrators, at least I presume they were; they had no foresight, though. I suppose they lacked the ability to look down the line and wonder how do we keep it going.

"It's like the Brits. Part of a consortium that won the second World War and then they won the World Cup in 1966, but just because you win doesn't mean everything is all right."

When the minors won an All-Ireland in 1999 the view in the county was that with a few of the younger players from 1994 lingering, the side would naturally graduate to a senior All-Ireland some time early in the new century.

"Unbelievably naive," says Ross Carr, "but I suppose we're not the only county."

Instead Down folk have watched the dominance of Armagh, in particular, with the gritted smile of a farmer whose horse has died on the same day his neighbour leads a new thoroughbred from the yard.

"It was fabulous!" laughs Carr. "You want to go to an All-Ireland final and watch Armagh or Tyrone play in it! Who would you want to win? Ah listen, their record of consistency is pretty phenomenal. They did it at times when Galway, Kerry and Tyrone were strong. They were still able to do it. Their period of domination from the late 90s till now is remarkable. I think what they had went back to the early 90s. Four or five really strong-willed characters.

"The Dubs had it in the 70s, Kerry in the 70s and 80s. You need four or five fellas to take ownership of the team."

Whether Down have found those sort of characters is moot. The minor All-Ireland-winning side of 1999 was joined by another successful minor outfit two years ago, the same season as the county reached an Under-21 final also. In a county where confidence has never been a rationed commodity there are winners available to the county selection.

The recently deceased league, however, was a difficult time, Down taking the relegation tumble and failing to win a game. Carr takes it on the jaw.

"We had a disastrous league campaign. No illusions. We were looking to pull three or four games out and go and win them but looking back, you could say it was a shambles. But it was a period of time that we needed to use to try people in different positions, try new people and get something going. Knowing we were going to Breffni and that if we find decent form we have a chance."

They learned. The hard way but the lessons were absorbed. They made a decision when they were installed that they would looked holistically at the panel and the football they had played. They examined the training the players had done and found that some were going from club to county to university for four years non-stop. They took a brave decision, feeling this wasn't conducive to performance in the summer. They gave a lot of players two to three months off.

They were pared to the bones when an inexperienced team got flamed by Jordanstown in the McKenna Cup. Jordanstown were in the middle of their season. Down were nowhere. They drew with Antrim and for a long while put it up to Donegal in Ballyshannon. The McKenna Cup was worthwhile.

Some of the players then rejoined from sabbatical. Their fitness had declined and with the experimenting and the game of catch-up fitness-wise, the league was a struggle. There were three or four games that with 10 to go they might have won, but they took nothing but the consolation that there was a lot right with the work they were doing.

"Ah," says Carr, "We never thought it would be a bed of roses or that two fellas who had won All-Ireland medals would be able to just come in and turn it all around. There were more problems than that and we could end our term with this county being no further forward than when we took it over. Still, we look forward."

They have four debutants starting tomorrow. They knew long ago they would be without Ambrose Rodgers, Liam Doyle or Damien Rafferty, while Michael Walsh, who scored five against Cavan in the corresponding championship fixture last year, is on the bench having just recovered from a nagging hamstring.

"I would believe," says Carr, "that if they can handle the day, waiting till four o'clock, etc, if they can handle the atmosphere and the intimidation of that Breffni roar and get off to a start where we aren't chasing after 20 minutes we are in with a good chance. You can prepare all you like.

"We have lots of new players. First-year or second-year players. You want big hearts and clear minds."

Long ago, back in 1991 in The Athletic Grounds, Down played Derry in a poorly anticipated Ulster semi-final. Neil Collins saved a ball from going over the Down bar. With the last kick of the game a fella called Ross Carr scored a huge free to draw the game. Down won the replay and that year's All-Ireland.

That was then. This is now. Tomorrow Aidan Carr lines out at number 11 for Down. Another scion. His dad, Ross Carr, still looks forward.

Last Year's SFC Matches

Cavan

Ulster Round One Down 1-13 Cavan 0-11

Qualifier Round OneKildare 1-18 Cavan 1-13

Played 2, Lost 2

Down

Ulster Round One Down 1-13Cavan 0-11

Ulster Quarter-final Donegal 1-12 Down 1-11

Qualifier Round OneSligo 1-7 Down 0-4

Played 3, Won 1, Lost 2