Tailteann Cup 2023

[georgedoylesrightleg]

i feer a skutchin on sunday

as I feered. confidense is brittal wit theee lads n has bene since sugrue. tuff on de boys today.

[clonadmad]

As hurtful as the situation is, some of the comments I see under Laois Today Facebook posts and Laois GAA's posts on Twitter are completely counter productive. Can't believe some people would actually put their name to what they're saying. Absolute cretins.

Say what you will about todays performance and the lads involved with that team, but they were the ones that stuck their hands up in January and wanted to play for Laois. Some of them, naturally, won't be involved going forward. If this was Mark Timmons' last game for Laois then that's a real shame - absolute warrior who would've made it on any Laois team.

As for the game itself, well Down did what Limerick probably ought to have done last week and scored a ton of goals. It was clear to anyone watching last week that we were far too open and soft in the centre and we ultimately paid a heavy price for that today.

It just goes to show the level of frustration and anger in the county that people are willing to put their names to the comments

I might not agree with some of what is being said

But I'd take it over apathy

Whether it's just a one day wonder and anything is done is another story

[Joeythelips]

I get people will say we don't have the players, but they deserve to have the best preparation possible. Laois really need to get in a decent management set up asap. I know they also need to do a lot of other things to improve Laois football but the current players deserve to be prepared for senior inter county football. As previous posters have mentioned things fitness levels and basic tactics were not up to the standard required the past two seasons. That has to reflect very poorly on the management set up.

[High Fielder]

Nobody wants this job Joey. They've had the world's worst time getting coaches; in both codes. Brennan said his piece and they got rid. Sugrue bailed prematurely. Who in their right mind would want anything to do with us? Our reputation is shot. We're a root and branch job, not just the branches. Not even sure where you'd start 

[Giovanni]

I get people will say we don't have the players, but they deserve to have the best preparation possible. Laois really need to get in a decent management set up asap. I know they also need to do a lot of other things to improve Laois football but the current players deserve to be prepared for senior inter county football. As previous posters have mentioned things fitness levels and basic tactics were not up to the standard required the past two seasons. That has to reflect very poorly on the management set up.

Fully agree. We start by improving the things we can actually improve. There may be a lot of things wrong and we have to identify them and fix them one step at a time. The senior management set up is one of those things that clearly isn't working. This is a necessary but not sufficient condition for success.

[downtothecore]

Lads heads up. Down have shipped some big beatings over the years. We are only starting to get things moving but it has taken a lot of hard work. Laois just havent done the work that down have done this year and you could see their fitness was not up to the same level so they need to prepare better for these games.

[Andy06]

This could be a blessing in disguise.
An absolute hammering in front of national cameras at prime time hour for GAA. Its impossible to hide this one, unlike the shocking performances against London this year and Wicklow last which only had a few hardy die hards at it.
What would have been far worse in the long run would have been a "gallant" 7 or 8 point defeat and the powers that be decide to stick with Billy for another year rather than go through the hassle and annoyance of doing work to find a replacement. This is on top of the same lads deciding that everything is hunky dorey in our game and to carry on with our road to nowhere.

[Countyminor]

I'll shoot from the hip a bit here, definitely not the right moment but here goes anyways.

I think one of the big reasons behind our demise in recent years is Portlaoise and how we don't take advantage of what we have.

Gaelic football is dead in the town. People are completely apathetic to gaelic football there nowadays. The fact that there is no club actually in the town itself is definitely a contributing factor. A strategic review was carried out in 2017 outlining the requirement for a second juvenile club for Portlaoise. Has this been acted on since? This is an absolute necessity IMO, especially given how the Portlaoise club have not traditionally recruited around the Knockmay/Portlaoise College area of town. Adding a club there in that area alone would increase our footballing population by around 10k I'd say, maybe more given how quickly the town has grown? It's unwise for a small county like Laois not to use fully what we have at our disposal.

Change starts from the bottom up.

[thewobbler]

I know where the rant above is coming from.

But (Dublin aside) football is a rural game. Let the city folk do what city folk do. If you've 1-2 of the willing to work for it like the country boys, it's a bonus. A welcome bonus. But the throbbing heart of Gaelic Games isn't among hundreds of chimney pots.

[The Boy Wonder]

https://www.rte.ie/sport/gaa/2020/0201/1112404-laois-make-impressive-statement-with-win-over-armagh/

Looking back to 2020 our last decent win was the opening Division 2 game versus Armagh. In the meantime we lost John O'Loughlin, a great servant to Laois, and Ross Munnelly who was at the end of a great career at that stage. Twelve of that panel are still involved so we cannot blame player turnover for our current situation. Armagh was now a Division 1 team and in All-Ireland quarter-finals while we're at our lowest ebb in living memory – so what has happened since 01-Feb-2020 ?

I read an article in today's Sindo about former Clare manager, Colm Collins. Clare were a Division 4 team when Collins was appointed and at his first meeting with the players he made them very aware that Clare football was punching unacceptably below its weight. This is where Laois are now. Let's look and learn at what Colm Collins achieved with Clare in his 10-year stint.

I've been watching Laois football since the early 70's – Johnny Lawlor was our star forward in those days !  In the decade since we've produced top class footballers and until the last couple of years we were always a proud footballing county.

To my mind there are 3 things that contribute to our current situation
1.    Either we are not producing the talent any more or our talent is not nurtured properly
2.   The change in the nature of the game – we've not mastered the possession football game
3.   Lack of vision and ambition in the county

I gather that the Laois SFC format does not help but, living in Dublin, I don't know. However, we're reached 2 Under-20 Leinster Finals in recent years so there is obviously some talent in the county.
There is no point in any sour grapes with Billy Sheehan and I certainly would not criticise the players – I had great sympathy for them yesterday as they gave their all. It's was always a long shot but we will all wonder how we might have performed with a better gameplan.

[on the hop]

On the game itself , it was a hard watch in there today.  There have been issues all year and even further back in relation to mobility and pace in the team, the defensive middle in particular. At times we seemed to go heavily defensive this year , even deploying Timmons as a sweeper. This had varying degrees of success , one in particular was the win in Sligo on a very heavy pitch. In hindsight the slower pace probably suited us at the time. For a variety of reasons we moved from rather than adapted this strategy possibly to add a bit more to the attack which struggled when isolated. There were worries going into today, a pacey looking down team were going to cause us problems, the lack of pace in some of the forward positions especially against attacking defenders, the concession of multiple chances per game and whether the consecutive games had taken its toll. Hopefully we weren't going to risk too many players that weren't fully fit, Croke park is not the place to take that chance. Even with this in mind , having conceded a record score against Dublin at home you would have hoped we had learned enough not to allow ourselves to be over ran by a down team that play a similar type of game. Keep it tight and competitive and see where it goes.

Well that illusion was shattered very quickly , from a lineball in the first minutes in the furthest corner of the pitch from our goal where we could have pinned them in , we conceded ground and let them unopposed go straight up the pitch into our middle and straight through on goals. No hits , no tackles , no blocks ,just a simple pace move. After that it was rinse and repeat , pop ball into space and multiple runners ahead of our players coming at angles. Nothing outrageous, just well executed give and go, pass and move. In fairness down had a bit of luck and displayed a high level of perfection with their passing and shooting but it was woeful on our part. Players running with their backs to the play , getting dragged out of the area in front of the goals to allow their runners to move into. Down must have been wondering are Laois that naive ? Are they really gone man to man ? The fact that they carved us open with our whole team at times inside the forty without any engagement in terms of a tackle was galling. I felt so sorry for the players at times especially in defense where there was no cover, imagine been one on one with a forward with half the pitch to cover. In the end a little spurt took the trauma off the score line. For the second time this year we conceded 40 points in a game and in both games it could easily have been more. Every weakness once again has been ruthlessly exposed, and this time its in a secondary competition against a team in a division above us. Maybe this down team will go and win the competition and establish itself as a great team but we conceded 8 goals in Croke park, it feels as bleak as that. I am sure lots will play out this week but I can't see how Sheehan can survive this.

The senior team is the flag ship team in the county , which attracts sponsorship, ambition and if going well interest. What's happening at the moment can't continue to become the norm. It will reach a point where it can't be retrieved.

[mcwregor]

Replacing Billy Sheehan will not improve our fortunes. We are simply miles off the pace. We are going to lose players now too which will weaken us further.

We need a 10 year plan for football and hurling in the county and we need it now!

Trouble is who is going to firstly come up with the plan and who is going to implement it??

We probably have better people in laois than Michael Duignan but is there anyone willing to step up and do it?
It wouldnt be easy but if we could just find a really ambitious, intelligent and driven Chairperson. He/She should be able to pull like minded people into positions to help drive the thing forward.

Like many posts on here it has to start at grass roots from the bottom up.

[High Fielder]

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

[BrotherMore6592]

Time for Laois to close the gates and let the cows out to graze

[Zooming around]

Trouble is who is going to firstly come up with the plan and who is going to implement it??

Part one is no problem. Any amount of lads could (and have) done that.
Based on the past the answer to part two is "Nobody".