Poacher wants young Leitrim footballers to become a "wee bit obsessive" about their football

Building a winning culture for Leitrim football will take time and patience and quite a bit of buy-in from the county’s footballers but that is the message Steven Poacher is trying to embed in his young team ahead of this year’s Allianz NFL Division 3 campaign.

Laois are first up next Saturday, January 25, in Pairc Sheain Ui Eslin for the opening round of the League but for Poacher, the aim is to create a culture that can be built upon and built upon over the course of a number of years: “We're trying to create a culture and we're trying to create standards among the group.”

Poacher describes himself as a football obsessive and it is a trait he wants his players to emulate, even if admits that trying to get younger players to think that way is a challenge: “I suppose, me being from Ulster, we sort of eat, sleep, drink football and you never stop thinking about football and you're constantly thinking about it. 

“There's nearly a complete obsession about football, from what I would have known, managing and coaching in the north and, you know, being involved in other counties and other provinces as well.

“Maybe it's a generational thing, but maybe some of the younger lads just don't think about football as deeply as maybe they should and I suppose we're trying to get them to think about their football a little bit more and maybe become a wee bit obsessive about it. Because, if you want to be successful, obviously you have to dedicate a lot of time to something.”

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The new Leitrim coach cites the example of Armagh and the ten year tenure of Kieran McGeeney as an example of what can be achieved with persistence and the constant application of high standards: “You go to the Aidan Forker story where in 2017, they're bottom of Division 3 and McGeeney and people were calling for his head then.

“There was a small group of players, along with Forker, who were setting standards and it was a small circle. That circle in 2018 got a little bit bigger and they got out of Division 3 and then seven years later they're all Ireland champions.

“I'm not suggesting that we're on the same trajectory as that, but what I am suggesting is that you can learn - winners leave clues and you can learn from winning teams. We want to try and bring standards and culture to Leitrim that hopefully will leave it in a better place than when we came.”

Implementing those standards is tough but even more so given the late start to his tenure with Leitrim following Mickey Graham’s on-off appointment, a fact that left the former Carlow and Roscommon coach with very little time to have a look at the talent available to him during the club championships.

“Obviously we came in in probably, quite strange circumstances with Mickey stepping away. So coming in, we came in quite late to the project. For me, not having an opportunity to see the club championship and not having an opportunity to probably see a lot of football meant the only team we were probably exposed to was Mohill.

“The only real game that we were obviously able to see was Mohill, as County Champions, playing Pearses in Connacht so we cast the net wide and far and we opened it up to players to come in for a trial period and see if there was anything out there outside of the current panel that maybe we had missed.”

For all challenges they’ve faced, Steven and his management team of Anthony McGrath, Ryan Jones and Daniel St Ledger have been great encouragement by the response they’ve gotten since their arrival: “Listen, the response we had from players, particularly the younger players, has been brilliant. We have a very young group assembled now.

“Obviously we had to respect the training ban as well, so we didn't really start till the 7th of December, the date we were allowed to start and bar a bit of S&C and stuff that the boys were allowed to do. So even that was difficult, in a sense, to get things up and going. But we're up and running now and we have a panel assembled of 35, 36 and there's a good group there.”