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If portlaoise show up and decide to play near their potential they will annialate stradbally. Strad have improved a bit this year and begley is a big help but they have had a very handy run to the final, clonaslee, cretty twice and ballylinan, they took a long time to finish off a very limited cretty team today (bar maher who i felt was excellent in the first half and murphy). Portlaoise to win by 5 minimum.

considering that portlaoise bet killen by 5 or 6 a few weeks ago without healy i cant see how they will overturn the town this time.
Crettyard from what i know wont play the ballinakill lads bar the 2 who started the last two matches and the sub they had as a number of them who were due to start never showed up before the ballyfin game and never informed management they wouldnt be showing up beforehand, regardless I think stradbally will win this handy enough.

While I do think that Portlaoise will win the 10th title I think this may be the first year they will have properly been tested in Laois, weather thats from the other clubs improving, Portlaoise slipping or a combination of both remains to be seen, and probably wont be known until the leinster campaign

If the county board were unwilling to fund cheddar, who has probably saved them alot of money over the last few years, the chances are that they are unwilling to go out and spend big on a outside manager. I actually felt that cheddars time should of been up after this year, for all the good he has done since 2013 it seemed to go stale and their was regression this year, partly due to a number of retirements to be fair. If they are going to go with a laois man I think that the number 1 target should be Niall Rigney again. He is proven with Laois and has achieved success since his last stint too. Another possibility I could see would be Arien Delaney from Camross, who I felt has done a great job with that team considering where they were before he took over.

I got in a bit of trouble with some posters on the hurling page for saying that abbeyleix bottled the minor hurling but im afraid that with the same group of players they did not learn their lesson, having a 5 point lead with 15 minutes to go is the same as having a 10 point lead in hurling and the exact same that happened in the hurling happened tonight except this time we were caught. We got in a position where the game should of been closed out and it wasnt, panic set in when they got the goal, albeit they got some cracking points to equalize and go ahead.
The only consolation is that some of those boys are cracking players and that tonight defeat will allow them to learn the lessons they clearly didnt against ballacolla in the hurling

moffit and keys started the semi, although i know delaney will be starting tonight so that may change.

 Regardless of the draw, they look the team to beat and a 6th title in 11 years would propel them well ahead of their rivals in the bragging stakes.
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Surely Camross have to be considered favorites atm, they have already beaten rathdowney/errill and destroyed ballacolla in particular, where they looked extremely fit and clinical

Is quality and competitive the same thing as the Laois Hurling Championship is competitive but quality wise is quite poor.  Gaels teams of course should be allowed but not at the destruction of clubs who do not want to be involved.   Is the problem with the senior football championship in Laois or the fact that Portlaoise has over 60% of the population of the county to pick from.
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The best way to make the championship more competitive is to increase the quality of the teams in it. If you have 8 teams in the championship and have the best players from the teams below senior playing with those clubs too you would imagine the quality would automatically increase, because at the moment portlaoise are several levels above everyone else.

Also there is around 20 thousand in portlaoise, theres 80 thousand in laois so 60% is a gross overestimation

The championships should be reduced down to 8 or 12 and gales teams should be encouraged, if you had emo with donoher and o'halrahan etc, josephs with daly e malone etc, and other gales teams the competitiveness in laois would increase immediately, imagine stradbally with a few of the timahoe players. Its a good way of allowing the best players play at the highest level while allowing areas/clubs keep their identity if amalgamations is something they do not want to entertain.
If you look at the teams that went with the gales concept this year you could argue that the 3 of them would of been regarded as been in the relegation mix this year

Has there been a date set for the replay? from what i know the minor football final is moved to next week and both ballacolla, abbeyleix and ballypickas are hurling at the weekend so it could be a while before this game is refixed depending on results at the weekend. From what i could see from last night ballacolla are very reliant on cleere and phelan(which is no disrespect to the other ballacolla players as they are fantastic young players) whereas abbeyleix were more of a team and seem to have more scoring options

Im afraid going by tonight the bottling gene in abbeyleix is spread beyond their senior team, how they drew that game ill never know they were much the better team

Depending on how ballinakill go in the hurling spink could still have a big say in this championship, they got within two of the heath in the replay without the ballinakill lads and have shown now they have lads well capable of stepping up above junior, it'll probably be between spink, ratheniska and rosenallis which is a good thing. Rather a first team win a championship when at all possible

I know that the league is off topic considering the championship season has begun but does portlaoise 2nd team go up to 1b after winning division 2 or are they required to stay in a lower division than their seniors?

I also agree that the relationship that ballyroan and abbeyleix have had has been hugely benificial to the clubs, I would actually be of the opinion that we should be one club under the one name (Abbeyleix/Ballyroan, St Lazariens,etc) one crest, one parish as that is kind of where it has been heading anyway, would also drive the final nail into Ballypickas too

We had 3 starting against kildare diarmuid whelan. ciaran carroll and conor brennan