All-Ireland Football Qualifiers 2016

[ILikeStrawberryJam]

Best of luck to the lads. To be honest i think Clare might win. They are more of a team
than Laois and have been playing consistently well all year. We are disjointed and trying
to implement a new game plan in the space of a few weeks. Having said that there is a lot
of talent in the squad and on their day they can beatmost teams. If Donie plays well
we will prob win, but thats a bif if .. we have a strong bench so hopefully we are still there with 15 to go..

I reckon the team thats named will start  SCFC

[Joeythelips]

Bad defeat, held scoreless in the final quarter. Hopefully Cunningham can be given the lead role as there is talent there, just needs to be organised from what I can see.

[High Fielder]

A game we should have won, no doubt. We lost more control with each passing sub. Some of these lads will never be good enough. I hate saying that, but it's true. Some lads ran themselves into the ground and what we had to replace them just weren't up to it. A bad day for the line. Some poor calls made today and of course Marty Duffy made sure they were always in with a shout. Two frees near the end were gifts.

[redsetanta]

Cue BallyroanAbu.

[Faugheen]

That performance today was a joke.End of story. Too many passengers, too many gloryhunters and no plan A or plan B.

[BallyroanAbu]

In the way we overreact to a win, we over analyse a loss.  This goes back to Justin McNulty he had us organised and we played dreadful football however we were competitive and we won more than we lost.  I for one felt the moment for this Laois team was to go for the jugular against Donegal in Carrick on Shannon because believe it or not we had them.  Since then we have spoofers namely Tomas and naivety Mick Lillis .  What do we expect we have to build from the bottom up.  Next Sunday is a big day for this county we need this minor team to win the Leinster Final and we need to build our U14,U16,u18 & 21's.  Anthony Cunningham should not get the Laois job on the basis of what has happened since he arrived.  We need to sit down and start developing our own coaches and that means another Laois Man gets the Laois Job there will be bad ones but we must persist if young Laois Club managers are going to develop and come down the line.  There is nothing wrong with the talent this years U21 team was badly resourced but talent wise we had as good as anybody.  Laois needs to get off it's arse and start working and it's not going to change quickly.  By Laois Man I mean someone working within the Laois club or county Scene prior to county appointment

[on the hop]

easy enough to analyse that, we lost to a team that wanted it more. they weren't much better than us as both teams were awful but we kept them in the game with our constant fouling and stupid mistakes something we did all through the league. i thought we would win, keep them at arms length and scrap through but when the surge came on despite our massed defence they still found space to overlap and kick the winning score.

i didn't think our system was too bad at times yesterday in the first half, we cut out a huge amount of ball but over elaborated by playing 2/3 sweepers in the second half and inviting them onto us. With the ball not sticking in the forwards and a number of players not wanting to know about it or running out of gas the defence was under massive pressure. playing kieran Lillis as a sweeper was disaster as he didn't have the pace to cover the spaces and gave away three frees which they scored from. we needed both wing backs to push up and support the forwards but strong looked out on his feet after he scored his point and was awful before he was black carded and begley and Damian o connor just never got in it. Meaney and Begley who should have been leaders both were taken off. Clare's only forward on the wing also kicked three points from play. full back line especially attride who was everywhere played well. we probably should have kicked long to midfield more and trusted them instead of short kickouts which we turned over when they pressed up. midfield then disappeared in the last ten minutes. forwards were a mess. We simply didn't play enough up in the first half when we had the elements and there was no pace. meredith was the best while the rest were very poor. donie had a shocker and hasn't the pace or bite to be the front man. Evan o carroll was missed here. Subs added nothing but i thought Ross and Gary should have been earlier. We missed a lot of scorable frees but given that we used 6 different kickers understandable. Gary Walsh's deplorable effort at the end summed up the day.

i don't where we are going, the age profile of the team and the poorness of the panel and what is coming through gives you the feeling that there is greater chance of us going down down to division 4 than getting back to division 2. i hope the minors win but they are going to be up against it. in reality its going to be a long time before we are anyway competitive.

[Giovanni]

Would agree with High Fielder. The substitutions, particularly the substitution of Meaney, was a real turning point in the game. He had done a huge amount of work in the game (and was probably our best player) but I didn't see any evidence that he was struggling.

I don't want to be too hard but I think the biggest problem was not on the sideline but in lads' heads. There was absolutely no belief in ourselves yesterday. We were playing "a defensive system" (that conceded 14 points) because"that's what you have to do in the modern game" to make sure we weren't hurt by the opposition.  The mentality was all about minimising the hits that we were taking but we forgot that we had to make a few hits ourselves. When it mattered, we didn't have the character that was needed to win the game.

Having said that, hats off to Brody, Attride, Timmons, O Connor, Quigley and Meredith. Cahillane, although he had a really poor game yesterday, is man enough to take responsibility which is more than can be said of some of them. Over the season, they've done themselves and their county proud.

[BallyroanAbu]

Giovanni are you serious.  They got relegated and what else.  This is not a personal slur on any player but there was nothing proud about Laois 2016. 

[High Fielder]

We were in control in the first half yesterday. Possession was dominated by us and they offered very little. Conditions got atrocious and we didn't have the lads to come on and keep hold of the ball. We play a lot of lads out of position because we have to, particularly in the backs, and we often times get made to pay for it. We've lost three very good backs in McMahon Healy and o Leary in recent years and it makes a massive difference. You can't replace lads like that easily in a county this small.

[Giovanni]

I don't see that the lads I named could have done much more. Unfortunately, relegation is always likely when you're playing with a half a team.

[High Fielder]

I agree with you Giovanni. Lads just focus on results and the players on the pitch. They forget that we are minus a lot of very good players. I can't be too harsh at the moment because we don't have the quality of player needed at this time. I am very sure if we did, we wouldn't have been relegated and we'd still be in the qualifiers

You can't keep replacing good players with inferior ones and expect results to stay the same or improve. We need our best on the field. We are not Dublin or Kerry. I feel sorry for some panelists because they are playing in positions that are alien to them. And all because they want to play for Laois.

[Giovanni]

Yes, you're right. The lads you've named would probably have made the difference.

However, my gripe is with the lads who do have the quality but haven't been giving the performances. I'm not going to single out players for criticism but there are some lads on that team who have as much technical quality as anyone in the country. But for whatever reason (I think it's a mental/confidence thing), they've been performing at a really low level. That's been the big disappointment for me.

[OTF]

For the record in 2013  we beat Clare ( more or less the same Clare team) 3-17  to 0-10  and Quigley, Meany and Walsh had left the panel.

I think above shows where we're heading.

[High Fielder]

They have improved a lot since then oft. We have disimproved and you're being very selective with your information by just putting up the result. We are having a bad time. It might not get better for a long time. Go and watch more club games and you'll see how bad it really is. We have a division 1 and it wouldn't be division 3 in some counties. Standards are at a low level. It's testament to the work at underage that we've got a decent minor team.