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The silence from the County Board is deafening. We need to hear from them. Their reaction to Sunday's debacle should not be kept behind closed doors. They need to talk to the wider Laois GAA public.

They owe it to the people who buy the jerseys, the match day tickets, even those who support Laois GAA by entering the All County Draw. Most of these people do not have access to secretive County Board meetings.

Sadly, the CB are accountable to nobody as things stand. That isn't going to change and they don't want it to. I cannot see the day when they take responsibility for what's going on around them; in fact I'm sure they're wondering why the focus is on them at all. I have less faith in the CB than I do in Billy Sheehan if I'm honest. Don't shoot me Joey!

https://www.leinsterexpress.ie/news/gaa/1234356/something-has-to-change-urgently-in-laois-gaa.html

Fair play to Conor Ganly in the Leinster Express

We need more of this from our local press

Ballsy alright. Can't imagine he's done himself any favours there

Surely the county board have had a meeting since Sunday to discuss what went wrong.

No guarantees. Potentially Billy's last job at inter County. I'd say they're genuinely afraid to let him go, because let's face it, he won't do a Sugrue and go quietly. That still rankles me by the way. If he walked away I felt he should have explained why. If he was pushed, it didn't make much sense. Once again the Laois GAA public disregarded

Billy another year,  means less than 200 fans at Senior Inter County Matches, his actually costing us every game he manages in fan apathy.

Don't worry. O'Moore Park will soon be called The Home Of Munster Football. Their teams play there more often than we do

I think people are looking at Sugrue's time with Laois through rose tinted glasses. Granted we achieved back to back promotions in the league and made a Leinster final (playing division 4 sides) but when we stepped up to face a half decent side we were blown out of the water by each of these teams too. In the division 3 league games that we got promoted we played in Croker twice and on Croker's open and firm pitch we were easily defeated by Louth and Westmeath in those games. If memory serves me correctly Louth could have taken us for a half dozen goals that day. In the bigger championship games, Cork blitzed us for 5-19 and Monaghan probably should have put up a similar score line the year before only for an unbelievable goal saving display by Graham Brody. He recorded 6 one-on-one saves that day. Meath also walked in 3 goals against us in a Leinster semi-final and probably left a further 3 goal scoring chances behind them as well. That Laois side of 2018/2019 is probably also stronger than the Laois side at Billy's disposal in 2023 with players like Attrite and Gareth Dillon available at the time.

The argument that if we had a different management in place it would improve Laois dramatically doesn't stack up when you look at the evidence. Laois simply don't have the players to compete at a high level at the moment. A new management team might improve things  slightly but regardless of who is managing us it is lunacy to think that we could have gone toe-to-toe with an in form Down team. Need to put all our efforts into revitalising the underage set-up in the county at both club and school level and meaningfully look to tackle the Portlaoise problem where a town of 20000 plus is a GAA wasteland if you drill into the actual participation numbers.       

Another great post LR

It doesn't for me, because I start from a fundamentally different viewpoint as you and JD. The real crime for me is the lack of preparation at underage. The way we treat our best footballers and hurlers who we hope one day will represent us at Senior level. It seemed obvious to me that Down were more athletic in every sense of the word. The sort of athleticism that is nurtured over many years

You can't have it both ways Joey. If the players manufactured the wins, then surely they should take responsibility for the losses? Or is it just the losses that Billy has responsibility for? By the way, and lest we forget, Billy is assisted by Chris Conway, whose reputation for tactics and matchplay has been well received in the past. Surely he's not just standing idly by and allowing Billy to go full kamikaze?

The clips provided by OTH are fairly damning. There were enough Laois players in place to stop the onslaught. They just couldn't, sadly.

What happens next by the way? Do we sit around twiddling our thumbs while the CB decide Billy's fate? Do we wait another 2 or 3 months to get someone in? Groundhog Day over and over and another kick for touch. What a mess

A proper defensive plan cuts out 5 of them goals straight away. They were long balls in to lads being marked 1 on 1 cos we pushed up on the kickouts. Not possible to defend like that in the modern age and not fair to expose players like that either. One goal came from a kickouts that almost rolled from midfield to the half forward line ffs. I'm not saying we'd have won but at least keep it tight till half time and reassess then.... we only kicked 4 points anyways so we might as well have 14 behind the ball and be as nasty and cynical as we could get away with. Would Offaly or carlow turn up with a plan like that. To say that the players are not capable of competing at this level is pure bull. Port would do better than that. It's about a plan and how they train. We were here before john sugrue took over saying the same stuff and suddenly we were div 2. I could name 5 or 6 players capable of playing Co football  who were not in there. Some declined which I'd be annoyed about and some were not asked. That's down to management not asking or making it attractive for them. This comes down to asking x why he won't come in and if x says its cos of work then we tell him that it'll be sorted out if x says its to do with finance then we get that sorted. Transport?? No problem it's sorted. Same for hurlers get the best people in and take away any excuse they might have for declining. I heard of a player being locked out of a meeting for being seconds late after travelling a long distance  for training. That auld stuff has to stop. Put the players first give them the best training the best plan and tactics and I bet a pound to a penny we'd fly div 4 and be strong in Tailteann Cup next year

I disagree with almost all of this. I can accept that Sugrue might, and I stress might, have got us out of Division 4, but not any further. The only way we could have stopped Down would be to build a wall. We just don't have the pace or power.

The local Championship will be starting soon and by God will you see some floury spuds then. This County is set up to fail

People won't walk into a closed shop. Many people with good intentions have gone in and either been outvoted or shot down. That's how it operates. Honestly it's an outdated process in itself. But they seem happy to have it and happy to use it to their advantage

Open it up. Properly. Let's see what we've got

Of course. But even allowing for that we're a long way off them. We have to learn to accept that we're in a desperate place. Only when we fully acknowledge that will we set about fixing it. There are still a lot of people who can't accept that we don't have the players at the moment

The senior clubs have us properly castrated too. This insistence on 16 senior teams when in reality we probably haven't got 4 properly senior clubs. I believe every player should have access to senior football,  but I can't tolerate watching teams clinging on just to call themselves senior. It needs shaking up as an immediate priority. We have so many truly awful senior teams

No Billy is a dreadful manager, any level of organisational ability and we would be far more competitive.

I disagree. They were the best we have available out there yesterday.  They could never get near Down

He's in the wrong place at the wrong time. The decline has been years in the making

Excellent post LR. It was that obvious, sadly

There has to be a big shake up now, but just of the management of our senior football team, but of the County Board. There must be a root and branch shake up. If not, beatings like this will become commonplace. Our county board has failed us. It cannot continue as it is currently structured.

+1. Should have happened years ago. It's too late now when we're in this much sh1t

Long term we need a complete overhaul of everything we do. In the short term we need to dredge the county of all available talent and turn them into a team that can cope with the demands of modern day football. We can disagree all we want about Billy, the standard of club football, the CB or whatever. Fact is that yesterday is not acceptable