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The expectations of Laois football and the supporters can be debated. Is it right to think that with the present panel we should be aiming for promotion? It's reasonable to expect them to be in the hunt at the very least.

Football across the board isn't strong. Did Sligo, Antrim and Offaly produce anything outstanding to beat us? No they didn't. We contributed to our own downfall in the three games. Laois, with debatebable management setups, have beaten Armagh four times in under a year so the standard up there must be pretty poor too.

I think any manager worth his salt would have taken Meaney off yesterday after he got away with the frontal charge that could have seen him get a second yellow card. Get the message on for a player to go down for treatment or anything at all that will give you the chance to make the change. The player himself must take responsibility but you could see what was coming. Don't stand with your hands on your hips waiting for it to happen.

Peter Creedon was appointed on the basis of his underage record with Tipperary. That's fine but the age profile of our squad doesn't have the time for that. It didn't have the time when Tomas O'Flatharta was appointed four years ago and it had less time this time around. Every effort should have been made to leave the Laois football team in the best possible position.

The Longford game in a few weeks is important but not as an important as yesterday. If we wanted to develop players we needed to make sure that next spring they were playing at as a high a level as possible.

It now looks like the County Board have botched three managerial appointments in a row. Everyone seems to have a horror story about the underage coaches. The whole setup requires serious work and really good decision making but you wouldn't want to hold your breath.

There is so much wrong with Laois football it's hard to know where to start but I'll give it a go.

The league this year has been extremely disappointing. Despite all the injuries we left three games, Sligo, Antrim and Offaly, behind us. We were fortunate to win away in Armagh and the one game where we defended with some real purpose, Longford, we won.

People will say that the players aren't good enough but looking at the standard across the board, I see some limited enough teams doing well. I wouldn't say Fermanagh or Clare have more natural talent than Laois but they've both played in All Ireland Quarter Finals in recent years. They do however have good management teams in place. We haven't had one in five years.

Going to Tullamore yesterday the plan should have been to make it as hard as possible for Offaly. They had rebounded from their hammering in Armagh with a spirited display against Tipperary and win in Sligo. This was a do or die game and they should have been made earn every score they got. Instead we coughed up soft score after soft score. Tackling, discipline and work rate were all well below the standard you would expect of a team fighting to stay out of Division 4.

A good management team with the right coaches can instill some of the above into teams. We have a forward, Donie Kingston, who is as good as what is playing football in the country but yet at times we are reluctant to let the ball into him. In fact it wasn't really until Meaney went off yesterday that we started to let the ball into him and at that point it was more desperation than any great plan from management. Moving Darren Strong out the field and Dennis Booth back into the full back line looked an obvious swicth but it didn't happen until the later stages of the game. At least play lads where they can try and give their best performances. If it proves not to be good enough then so be it.

Nobody is saying that we should be going toe to toe with the bigger counties but we should be trying to give ourselves the best possible chance of acheiveing something. In the last five years we haven't.

The dogs on the street know what is going on with this County Board for the last number of years is a disaster. Our underage performances have fallen off the map. Our senior team has been relegated three times and bar two spirited performances against Dublin our performances in the Leinster have been poor. Coupled with the fact that the standard in the province outside of Dublin would be pretty even, this is even more disappointing.