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Anybody going to any of the three hurling finals this weekend, Antrim, down and Derry. I would be interested in getting a Programme from the games, give me a shout at kheffernan75@icloud.com

Happy enough with that

Lots of insiders were happy to see Sugrue go. That's the reality. There will be no going back begging for him to come back. A man with his intelligence, demeanour and nous was a threat to them. John's the kind of person who will be successful wherever he goes. It doesn't matter who we appoint next because whoever it is will not give to Laois what John Sugrue did.

I find this unbelievable. Are you taking the piss?

Are you trying to ruin my holiday, your going to have to back this up.

I think Paul galvin got the Wexford job

I think you are being unfair to billy, he was one of the few laois supporters at a dead rubber o byrne cup match in bray this year.

How is it self serving he only kicked with Emo so he could play County football as soon as that was over he was gone.  He would of played with any county that would of taken him,  he no doubt had ability but should have never been considered for Laois.  He serves no purpose for Laois bar he was slightly better than our own.  I have no truck with him,  but our managers should be from within always.

So who would you think in laois has a chance??

Jerome stack wouldn't be a bad outside bet

would tyrell not look for a move to the nearest senior team which I think is ballyfin, he would be a great fit with portlaoise. 

That was one poor ballylinan team, they had no one bar the full forward who is a decent player. Portlaoise far too much pace for them and Lillis in particular was very impressive. Very noticeable the difference in size of the two teams. As for new players, Ronan mcevoy with five or six points from
Play and Jason Maher who was very mobile weren't too bad.

I hope the officiating tonight is not going to be the standard, The red card was very harsh on Saunders, they simply ran into each other. I am amazed at Maurice Deegan as lineman not copping this and also not assisting the ref when a point was signaled that was Cleary wide on his side.

Very good post highfielder, sums up how I felt. Massive chance missed with the strength of Dublin overage and the coming strength of kildare to win a final at this grade. We won't  get to many chances again. With so many underage next year, we will need them all especially Saunders but I hope someone seriously does a review of the year and tries to incorporate a strength and conditioning plan. I know a year might not make a huge difference but going forward he really need to up things. Dublin will always have massive teams but there was a noticeable difference tonight.

As underdogs we probably needed everything to go right, the ref certainly didn't help and favored them in most 50/50 decisions. I am amazed at him moving in frees, if he was getting abused that much then book them. The team gets frustrated along with the crowd and things start to unravel. Tactically we were shocking naive, we went zonal on there kick outs and it worked at times but when they went short the forwards should really have worked harder stopping coming out. They had no problems fouling far up the field. They had an out ball on the height distance on the wing, could we not have switched the wing back and wing forward just for the kick outs. They had us well scouted and problems we had with Westmeath in terms of the running game were not corrected. If Coffey vacates the wing to be the floating  link man there has to be a plan to counteract the space he leaves. He is either a centre forward or not. Jack Owens should have started, you either use dan or you don't.

There are lots of good players there, whether they develop into good seniors remains to be seen.

Any word on Paudie Maher? I hope he'll walk again some time in the future. Is there a Go FundMe page anywhere?
The bollox.

#prayforpaudie

This is a good group to keep together, there is a basis of a senior team if developed. I think a good few are underage again next year. U-17 team in 2017 was

Gorman, dowling, o Flynn, Mohane, horgan, saunders, slevin, Rogers, swayne, Brophy, Coffey, McCaul,Barry, Dunne and Owens.

That's worse on second viewing

looking back on it now, cork had their homework done on us, really went after our strengths and exposed our weaknesses. we stayed with them well for the guts of half an hour, creaking a bit at times before half time but the little spurt of 4 points to stretch the lead before the interval and then the first 10 after half time and the game was over. the rest of the game played out like a challenge match, we had numerous chances but were never going to be caught and the step up in pace killed us all evening, it wasn't helped by some crazy tactical decisions, but I don't want to commit heresy discussing them.

the key to me really looked like the failure to win kickouts when the game was in the mix. the full press saw us having to go long far to often and mostly towards Jol. they swamped the area around him, bringing both their wing forwards in and broke a lot of ball. brody doesn't have the length of kick to go over this so we tried a few short ones but were under a lot of pressure, lillis won a few but often in the corner and any possession we got had to translated into scores, but again we had some poor misses. with deane and McCarthy having a free role across their half forward line they drove down the centre often breaking tackles. we never really handled deane at all and often he laid off ball to looping forwards for handy scores. pressure on the kickers was minimal. the space down the sides allowed both their wing backs to drive at will. they had massive pace, an advantage they had in a number of areas on the field and created numerous overlaps and stretched our defense. it was very like the meath game with Keoghan. with no protection in front of the full back line and a succession of ball coming in along with untracked runners , they were badly exposed. it wasn't helped by some awful defending and 4-20 is a massive score to concede and possibly it could have been more. 7-33 in the two games against opposite that we would hope that we are getting close to or passing has to lead to a re-think of what we are at in terms of a defensive structure. its a pity the year had to end like this after a lot of progress has been made.

4-20 is unbelievable score to concede. A complete systems failure or a lack of a system or maybe options to adjust to what was happening. Two heavy defeats and seven goals conceded against teams that we thought realistically we could beat to show progression. Under 20 is vital on tuesday