Tailteann Cup 2023

[Joeythelips]

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

Exactly this, whatever the reasons yesterday was unacceptable. All involved will be linked with that shameful result, I feel sorry for the players as there have had to put in so much time and effort for that end result, its up there with the hurlers conceding 10-20 to the Cork hurlers in 2011. Utter humiliation.

I know people on here are critical of the players but Im sure plenty on here have trained under coaches who were simply not up to the task and we have to say Billy Sheehan clearly is not. Im not saying Laois would start winning trophies under a John Sugrue type coach (someone who has shown he can prepare a team for championship) but at least they will be a best prepared as possible in terms of fitness, planning, tactics etc when they go into battle. This has to be priority number 1.

[Chrimtain]

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.

[clonadmad]

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.

We don't need another effing plan

We've had 3 in the past 7 years and very little of any of them have been implemented

It's action and implementation is what's needed

Except all we will get is apathy

[clonadmad]

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.

This doesn't make any sense or relevance to Laois

Are you trying to make out Portlaoise is a City ?

That we shouldn't put resources into it because of its population size ?

When there are no issues in the likes of Killarney Tralee Newbridge Naas Thurles Kilkenny etc

[High Fielder]

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

[Laois Rising]

The first and most important ingredient to an intercounty footballer today is pace. It's incredible to think that within the county we genuinely do not have any players with any real speed. Even most mid rank counties would have at least a half dozen players with serious pace to either man mark, get up and down the field or to win ball played in front of them and create attacking opportunities. Ross Munnelly last year at 39 years of age was probably still the quickest forward we had on the panel over the first 5-10 yards. That tells you everything. Losing the likes of Attrite a few years ago was a huge loss as we could not replace him and what he brought to the Laois defence. Over the last 6-7 years he has been the only defender to come through who was truly capable of properly competing at inter county level. We have a lot of very fine footballing players in there now who are comfortable on the ball and will no doubt do a very fine job for their clubs in the club championship where the pace of the game will be that bit slower. However, as yesterday showed, footballing ability is no good if you cannot keep pace with your opponent. Down had their homework done for Laois and knew exactly what to do to hurt us.

I don't know how much you can coach speed into a player but if a lot of those Laois players want to stay playing at intercounty level it is something that they will need to work on over the off season. At the beginning of the league last year and again this year we recorded what appeared to be impressive away victories to Louth and Sligo. What these games showed was that on heavy pitches where pace is taken out of the equation we have players of good footballing ability.   

[High Fielder]

Excellent post LR. It was that obvious, sadly

[thegreeenandgold]

Great to win
Fair play to players
But Limerick butchered 5/6 goal chances

Down didn't butcher 5/6 Goal Chances
When lads were spouting on about Limerick game
In my time Billy possibly has presided over 2/3 of the worst results of all time. 

[High Fielder]

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

[thegreeenandgold]

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

[Sideline12]

The first and most important ingredient to an intercounty footballer today is pace. It's incredible to think that within the county we genuinely do not have any players with any real speed. Even most mid rank counties would have at least a half dozen players with serious pace to either man mark, get up and down the field or to win ball played in front of them and create attacking opportunities. Ross Munnelly last year at 39 years of age was probably still the quickest forward we had on the panel over the first 5-10 yards. That tells you everything. Losing the likes of Attrite a few years ago was a huge loss as we could not replace him and what he brought to the Laois defence. Over the last 6-7 years he has been the only defender to come through who was truly capable of properly competing at inter county level. We have a lot of very fine footballing players in there now who are comfortable on the ball and will no doubt do a very fine job for their clubs in the club championship where the pace of the game will be that bit slower. However, as yesterday showed, footballing ability is no good if you cannot keep pace with your opponent. Down had their homework done for Laois and knew exactly what to do to hurt us.

I don't know how much you can coach speed into a player but if a lot of those Laois players want to stay playing at intercounty level it is something that they will need to work on over the off season. At the beginning of the league last year and again this year we recorded what appeared to be impressive away victories to Louth and Sligo. What these games showed was that on heavy pitches where pace is taken out of the equation we have players of good footballing ab ility.   

T A SUPER EXCELLENT POST WELL SAID, 
L R.

[Giovanni]

HF I don't understand your defence of BS at all. Of course there may be a lot of things wrong with the country board (honestly, I don't know) but the county board is not preparing the team or making defensive plans. This is down to the team and management.

I think everyone on here understands that if we were to play Dublin, Kerry or Mayo tomorrow, we'd most likely be beaten well no matter who the manager is.

However, what happened yesterday is a humiliation against a Tailteann Cup team (albeit one that's on an upward curve). We were lucky that we didn't get the same outcome against Limerick and we squeaked through against a 14-man Fermanagh. We drew with London and lost to Wicklow this year.

There are enough good players in Laois to create a team that's competitive in games like this. A John Sugrue team would not have ended up with a pasting like this. He had, for example, turned Robbie Piggott into a really excellent man marker focused on eliminating the threat of the opponent's best player. He is now a corner back (!) and really not influencing the game at all. That's where management comes in. It's about picking your best players in their best positions and giving them a role that they can actually fulfil. It's about ensuring that the team adds up to more than the sum of the parts.

[High Fielder]

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

[Giovanni]

Just a reminder that Down finished 3rd in Division 3 and were beaten 4-10 to 0-12 points by Armagh in the Ulster championship. Sure, they're a decent young team but hardly world beaters.

[High Fielder]

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