Messages

Poor enough game in the end. Both sides lacking quality.

The game was definietely there for the winning but we shot ourselves in the foot so many times.
Disappointing to see such a small crowd but I suppose we would have expected that.

Good post Higfielder.
Evan is definetely a confidence player and when hes good hes very good but when hes bad he's terrible and doesnt want to know. Might have been a bit unlucky coming off so early on Sunday not because he was playing well but because Paul Kingston was annoymous to at that stage. Something had to be done to change up the forward line. Just before he came off his man beat him for a ball and in a short run easily put 20-25 yards between them. It was probably what decided it.
As for Donnie at this age he more than likely never will reach the potential or peak fitness he could of had. Saying that for me at least he is our best player by a mile. His skill and more importantly at times his calmness and composure on the ball is at another level to most of the rest of the team.
To say the difference between Laois and meath was they had better attackers than our defenders doesnt sit well by me. I think on average there was nothing much between the teams. We just got our strategy completely wrong. As others had said for a lot of the game we owned the ball but as has been the problem under a lot of Sugrue's tenure we are to negative and pedestrain. I was a little bit disappointed by some of the decisions coming from the line. With being 7-8 points down Ross was the only player in their half at times. I think if we had been more positive and pushed on, especially in the first half when we owned the ball the game was there for us. Why for instance when we had nothing to lose was Donnie or Quigley not pushed up for some high balls into the box.
With the way we play we struggle to get decent scores on average and even an okay team will have a chance to beat us.
My only hope against Derry is if we play a more adventerous type of game.

Tony as much as I like Donnie, and I think hes far and away our most skillful player, I cant see him every being a midfielder at a decent level in the game.
Todays best midfielders are hard tackling and non stop moving up and down the pitch. Thats never going to be Donnies game. Look at the work rate of John O Loughlin and you can see there's a world of difference.
Plus I dont think were that blessed with talent up front we can take him out of there. He can literally make a score from nothing at times.

Most of the teams at this level are like the Ireland rugby team of old. They are spirited and full of energy and then fizzle away shortly after half time. Watching the last 10 mins of Div 4 game is like watching a game in slow motion. You can't improve technically playing the game at a break neck pace, so just invite them on, keep the scores low and hit them on the break. Going toe to toe is winning matches against bad teams, but the second we step up in terms of opposition, we will suffer. It's great to be winning matches, but I'm far from convinced we're moving ahead with any real conviction. Defensively, we really don't have the right pegs for the right holes

I agree with you in principle but I think that only the top couple of teams in Div 2 and all the teams in Div 1 are technically proficient.  I really believe that it will be Div 2 before our inadequacies would be highlighted up till then you can travel along way on commitment and fitness.  I do think Sugrue looks promising as a manager.  You can't do anymore than win and more so than anywhere most on this forum are aware of Laois's problems.

I'm leaning more with highfielder on this at the moment. We are going toe to toe with the weakest teams in the country and limping across the line. I dont think we have improved in anyway from last year and as others have pointed out we are creeping slowly back to the same team that got us relegated.

As for Sugree it is far to early to make a judgement on him but I would be quietly worried about his tactics so far and how we play. We seem to be employing a philospy of marking space and no the actual man which means a lot of the time we leave an awful lot of the oppossiton free and stand 10-15 yards off them. This has caused us continous problems all during the league.

Our wingbacks are rarely in our own half and usually play overly narrow leaving massive gaps along each wing. This also leaves Nerney massively exposed on his own at times and often in a one on one situation which is tough on a new inexperienced player. This has happened in nearly every league game this season and hasnt been fixed.

We rarely have runners moving beyond the man with the ball, and on the rare occassions we do we look good so its baffling more isnt made of it. Our forward line is static and narrow to meaning we get bottled up alot and dont stretch defences like we should which probably contributes to why we dont score a lot more goals at this level.

As for yesterday most of the above happened. London had a simple game plan of keeping a tight compact shape in their own half without the ball and then when they broke they usually went wide and hit long diagonal balls into the forward line which caused havoc. It was obvious from early on that when there kickouts went long they lost it so they simply put a man on each touchline and we didnt go man for man and had an easy outball.

As for who played bad well truth be told most of them were poor yesterday. Donnie started in central midfield but looked lost. Was out muscled a few times and stripped and didnt have anywhere near the engery or mobility for the role required. Came into it a bit more when he was shifted forward and scored a lovely pint but overall was poor and came off. Ross as well wasnt at the races with some really bad wides and often let his man pass him by easily. Paul K made some lovely runs and bursts at times but often stopped them and went backwards killing the attack. looks to have had a nasty hamstring injury right at the end. Daniel O Reilly looked really out of his depth and while he tried hard he was swallowed up at least four or five times and dispossed. Benny Carroll played a strange roll that didnt suit him and spent most of the game standing ten foot off his man near they half way line.

Attride and Dillon struggled badly at wingback at times and Dillion looks illsuited to the pacey blocky man he was marking who shrugged him off very easily. Nerney again was exposed in a few one on ones but in his defence he was left completely open at times.

On the good side John O loughlin had a great game and carried an ocean of ball. He took an awful lot of abuse and hits which a poor ref let slide. Including a shove to the face when he was on the ground right infront of the ref and linesman which they left unpunished. He was visible angry at a lot of his own team and was shouting at them at times in frustration.

Begley started well and looked to have the legs on his man but seemed to fade badly and went out of the game. As on the hop noted above a lot of the players struggled with the pace.

Gary Walsh played well had a few nice scores but like a lot of others took the wrong option at the end to many times when a simple point was on. Especially in the closing stages when the game was so close and he went for a goal from an extremely difficult angle when he could have fisted the ball over.

Evan O Carroll had a great game best for us for a while. He showed a lot of fight putting in some big decent hits at times and made a lot of hard running at times. Very impressed with him.

So Carlow next I think and this will probably be the first decent match we will have this year. If we play like we have so far this year I think we will lose. Carlow have a decent set of forwards and with the space we leave at the back I can see a couple of goals. Hopefully I m wrong but you might get decent odds on Carlow getting 2 goals or more on this defence.

Shocking stuff here at half time. The worst I ve seen thema long while.
Tactically the Laois line don't seem to have a clue and every time London attack they cut us apart.

On the hop has a few Sigerson programmes up on his excellent GAA Programme Collector facebook page  :)this week with the weeks thats in it.

DCU in 2006 also look to have the two Munnellys on it. No idea if they played or not but they were on the panel with Cahir.

In fairness it did look like he was saving himself on Saturday for this match.

I was there in O Moore Park for my sins on Saturday amidst one of the smallest crowds I have seen this year and like most people who were there it was a painful experience.
Within three seconds of the start of the game we had won a free. At that moment  my two year old chose to pull my leg for a snack and by the time I had given it to him and looked up we were a point down inside the opening minute and the same old foreboding that has come with every Laois match this season came back again.
There are some good posts on this thread and there are sadly a lot of bad ones but a general consensus seems to be that replacing Creedon is not the answer and that we simply don't have the players to compete at this level. This is something I can't agree with.
While we obviously don't have the players of yester year do we really have that worse of a team than Clare, Louth, Sligo, Antrim or Offaly of all teams? Now I know we have a lot of problems with the county structure and the board but for me I don't think we do and I think a lot of that comes from the manager. And if we have to start there.
Clare were no great shakes but for most of the game if not all of it looked comfortably better than us. Simply because they looked organised and had a plan and we, like nearly every game I have seen us play this year look like a shambles.
Examples of this would be the contrast in kickouts. The majority of our kickouts were long to the middle were a single laois man jumped usually on his own against 2-3 Clare players who broke the ball off him and we had no one even close to gather it up. Farrell must have been told to do a dummy run for each or own kickout's because he would start on one wing and loop around to the other and then back again as the ball was being kicked. No one from Clare even bothered tracking him and not one kickout landed near him.
Clare on the other hand took short kickouts. They won their first 5-6 kickouts with short ones to the backs while our forwards retreated up the pitch allowing them 40-50 yards before even attempting a tackle. Indeed some of their early scores came from a kickout and then 2-3 passes up the pitch without a single laois hand touching a Clare player which is criminal at this level.
After the first 5-6 kickouts someone decided that we had to push up on them which resulted in the Clare backs getting into a huddle and then breaking in all directions at once to receive the short kick out and hand pass it back to their keeper. As soon as the keeper received the ball again the Laois forwards retreated back and the same thing happened again. It was a snapshot of everything we have done this season. It was half arsed.
Under Creedon we have looked to play a defensive game with players crowding back and often a lone Donnie or an empty pitch ahead of them. At like most things done this year again it is half arsed. Players don't seem to know what to do in this defensive system apart from get back. Its like being told today you have to build a house here's a hammer and having no clue what to do after that. No one seems to know how to track runners, when to double mark, at what point you stop retreating and at what point you push up. With frightening regularity a static midfield is facing 2-3 players running full speed at them and is quickly over run.
Our fitness this year has also been shocking and this is something we never really had a problem with before. Against Kildare we were blowing after 20 mins and in most games this year we have faded off badly at the end.
Our support running is non existent at times and our movement off the ball is criminal. One of the worst examples of this was in Tullamore when late in the game Brody had to solo out the ball. He ended up in Kildare half, alone with four Kildare players around him and not one Laois player within twenty yards. This is not a skill issue or not having the player's issue. Its players not being fit enough or arsed enough or coached enough to run in support.
After watching Laois this year I have no idea what Creedon has done or what he has hoped to achieve. I can't say we are an attacking team or a defensive team. All I know is we are a poor team. To say the players are not there is an easy excuse but all the above are just simple examples of bad play. Nothing to do with skill. It's about bad management and organisation and fitness. We might not be able to change the players but we can change these things with a better manager.
Someone made a comment about Jim McGuinness a couple of posts ago and I ll be honest before the Donegal job I had never heard of the man. I m sure there an awful lot of managers out there in a similar vein managing at club or college level waiting for a chance.  Look at Cian O Neill with Kildare. There are still only a small few county managers jobs available each year. Managers that have a plan at least or think outside the box.
Because at the moment we are playing with no definite plan of action, players don't know what to do or when to do it and in such a situation good players look average at best and average players look very poor.

SFC Qualifiers Fixture: Laois v Clare on Sat at 3pm in Portlaoise.
SHC Qualifiers: Laois v Dublin at 7pm on Sat in Parnell Park.

Very little consideration given to us here, will have to fly up to the Hurling, no doubt there be a checkpoint on the bridge or speed cameras the whole way up !! 

Just seen the same thing. Between Friday night kick offs, home games in Kilkenny and double booking of the hurlers and footballers on opposite ends of the country on a regular basis do our County board ever stand up to anything.

Well that was painful.

A world of difference between the two teams in systems played, fitness, workrate and attitude.