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Forget it. Nothing changing here only the Coach. And if he or she turns out to be any good, the Heads will find a way to unsettle them.

Unfortunately thats the most likely scenario.
Whenever we get lucky and get a coach that shows any level of initiative or forward planning (see John Sugrue when he presented his topics for the improvement of the county at the end of his second reign) they are just basically given the cold shoulder by the county board. Clearly this level of free spirited thinking is frowned upon by the higher ups who just want a yes man that will be happy to just make do with what he is given for the guaranteed 2 year spell before we move onto the next one.

Well this is desperate.
Seeing as Westmeath will be in Div 3 next year, it could be a very quick drop back to Div 4 if we continue like this.
I think next year is time to say thanks and farewell to the likes of Lillis and O'Loughlin. Or at least keep them on as options from the bench. They have shown time and again this year they dont have the legs for a full game in what is the most athletically required position in the field. Fantastic servants, but its time to move on even if the replacements dont have them same level of skill if they are more mobile at least build with them.
Lillis also goes and decides to shove a lad in the head when he is already on a yellow card and just completely rail roaded the rest of his team mates, like the levels of stupidity are just off the scale.

Well thats us goosed!
Can't underestimate the job Sugrue has done. Never mind the work with the seniors which was his basic remit, but also the setting up of the Laois "area" championship last year to take a look at more lads, it was a super idea and shows the initiative of the man.
I would assume its for family reasons as it was clearly a project that he was building and I have no doubt he would have been eager to test him and his teams abilities against better teams.

Wonder how far the County Board went to keep him here, did they pre-empt any of  this, or did they try reach out to him as soon as the season finished to discuss a suitable arrangement for staying on. I have a feeling they did diddly squat!

Have to say what a brilliant year it is for Laois in the championship!
Senior footballers in a Leinster semi-final
Minor footballers in a Leinster semi-final
Senior hurlers with 2 wins out of 2 in the Joe McDonagh and looking well there
Minor hurlers into a Leinster quarter-final and flying by all accounts

Stats will show that McNulty was a successful manager for us but jaysus it was dire to watch.

Hard to believe we were in an All-Ireland quarter final. Or was it the round before that? And ran Dublin to 3 or 4 points?

Quarter final, Johno's own goal.

And Cluxton taking all day to kick frees.

Infuriating p***k.

Was 3 points in the end wasnt it? When you think of the gap now between pretty much Leinster and Dublin that is some going.
Obviously the top 3 or 4 counties in the country got close to them, but from "the rest" I wonder were we the last county in the championship to have a kick of a ball between us and Dublin. I do remember some good 10+ point beatings they have handed out in leinster finals to Westmeath and Meath since then.
Sickener was that it was all setup for us the following year with a reasonable draw to the final, only to get absolutely trounced by Louth in the first round of the Leinster at O'Moore Park.
As good as McNulty was his record in the Leinster championship was fairly dire.

Caveat to this needs to be that Kildare need to get their ground sorted (either new or upgrade Conleths - if even possible). If this isnt done (or plans to that effect arent made) in 5 years then GAA start cutting their funding.
Its widely known they have a shithole of a ground, they played hardball now to get their home game and fair play to them. But end result has to be a willingness to improve the ground.

Question.
Is the rule for home advantage to div 3/4 teams applied the whole way through the qualifiers?
I generally remember round 4 of previous years being played in neutral venues as opposed to given to the team drawn first.

Who is actually in charge of maintaining and updated the Laois GAA officialk website? It's a joke still. Nothing about the Leinster final at all in the news section. Two tabs for county fixtures and results and both are blank. We had minor hurlers, u20 footballers in the past week and no mention at all.
Evening a lad doing it part time on a few quid a week would have the time to do this. Surely no more than a few hours required. County news and results are totally neglected.

As far as I am concerned, here and LaoisToday are the official Laois GAA websites! That other one is just a waste of good domain name!

Well this article is far from re-assuring!
http://www.hoganstand.com/Article/Index/286158

Basically Kelly telling us (and not the first time this year) he has no idea how they are losing games.
Like what sort of idiot, even for himself, comes out with this sort of stuff "Yeh havent a baldies how we lost that 10 point game".
The fact that he is utterly clueless to spot where the issues are is absolutely damning. He needs to be jettisoned as soon as this campaign is done.

Well done to the team and management on a great win.
Westmeath were getting the early scores but right from the early stages I thought we were having the majority of possession but just over doing it when it came to the final pass or shot. This could have easily led to being another one of those days but all credit to the players they stuck at it. As they game wore on they found the scores their overall play deserved.
All the players had their moments but a few I felt made a big difference:
Niall Donoher - him coming of the bench immediately brought an increase of pace to the game. He seemed to be hoovering all around the middle and kicked two great points to set us on our way. You would assume he would be starting the next day, although a super option off the bench.
O'Loughlin/Lillis - After the initial phase they two lads dominated midfield for me, Westmeath couldnt get anything going here at all and it stopped them mounting any sort of comeback.
Gareth Dillon - thought this chap was brilliant, one steal of possession near our goals in the second half when he was left one on one with the Westmeath attacker (Luke Loughlin I think) was absolute joy to behold. He looks a proper corner back who knows how to defend, something we havent had since Healy.
Finbarr Crowley - I thought he showed very well for his debut, especially being stuck with Kieran Martin. He always kept going and definately made that position his own for the next day.
Donie - didn't do a whole lot with some promising balls into him in the first half. However, when the game was potentially still in the melting pot in the second half he moved to midfield and won some great kick outs. Also some of his distribution from the half forward position (including a great pass which Darren Strong hit a bad wide) was very good.
Paul Kingston - Goals were fantasically taken, you can see the confidence brimming by the end

As I said all players and subs played their part though, what a bench we have now.
Word on Westmeath aswell, I thought they were really poor. No sort of fight at any point in the second half as we just passed or sprinted through them. Dont think we were too far away with our assumption that the camp is not a happy one.

Bonus territory now as far as I am concerned. Promotion and a possible win over Wexford and Westmeath was the aim. Players can just go out now with no expectation, give it a shot and see what happens. Id imagine Sugrue is the sort that cant wait for the challenge against what would be on paper a better team to see how we can outfox them

Must be a long time ago. I can't remember beating Meath in Tullamore in recent times. Our record there is terrible.

July 2012 ...1-15 to 1-12 I think....Munnelly had a stormer as did Brendan Quigley we got to the quarter finals that year!

Was racking my brain trying to think of the game as it wasnt registering, remember it now. Was round 4 of the qualifiers i think, they had just lost the Leinster Final to Dublin and we were flying that day from what i recall. Let them back into it after being something like 8 points up at one stage in the second half.

[Colm Parkinson: Why do the GAA sell rights to RTÉ when this is the product they offer?]

Well said Colm...



Colm Parkinson: Why do the GAA sell rights to RTÉ when this is the product they offer?

https://www.sportsjoe.ie/gaa/colm-parkinson-rte-160136?utm_content=bufferfdc88&utm_medium=Social+organic&utm_source=Twitter&utm_campaign=Buffer

The coverage of GAA by the Sunday Game is something that has been utterly atrocious for a long time, and drives me friggin' mental.
The one thing about the GAA you can say is that at least they try different things, too much at times with the constant changing of the hurling leagues and championship. Majority of them are fairly bad (Super 8's) and always money driven but at least they have some sort of fresh thinking.
RTE on the other hand are still delivering up the same old rubbish format that they have for 3 or 4 decades now.

This garbage of showing extended highlights of a game that was on only a few hours earlier followed by yet MORE analysis by a bunch of lads rehashing what was said earlier is just mind numbing!
All the while the other matches are given lip service. Wicklow got their first win in 5 years in the Leinster championship, huge for them and their supporters-2 mins. Carlow have now won a Leinster game in two consecutive years, again huge for them-2 mins. And of course the excitement of the Wexford Laois game-2 mins.
In this day and age, how can the RTE not have some set of decent cameras at those games, like they have chaps there via the radio so just get them to do the full coverage. It is an utter shambles and has been for ages and yet we are being forced to hand over cash for it.

I would love for someone to get the rights and just give it a real good coverage. Sky if they really wanted to could sell it much better with a highlights package during the week,  they could also have the possibility of selection of a different number of live matches on at the same time, something they already do with the soccer. It would blow the pathetic showing RTE throw up out of the water and you would hope result in a raising of the benchmark of how GAA should be covered.

It is more or less the same team but i think we have been hard done by injuries and defections at the moment. I would have expected Eoin Lowry and Daniel O'Reilly to be 2 names in the starting 15 for the game against Wexford if they were fit and available. Throw in Robbie Piggott going to the States and it takes away another potential starter on the half back line.
To be honest I dont think a brand new starting 15 is needed at this point. If we could have gotten the above in, make the likes of Dillon and Farrell more established players then we would be making progress while also putting pressure on the older heads to fight for their places.

Suppose I would be classed as one of the "lurkers"! Tend to prefer reading other people's viewpoints on things, which more often than not would relate to mine anyways. Also, being away from the county and having a young family limits the amount i can get to games so dont think its fair to comment on something i only get second hand info on.

My views on the league as a whole are that progress has definately been made. As Unlaoised mentioned we have blooded a lot of new players, some of which look at home in the starting 15 already in Gareth Dillon and Robbie Piggott. I hope these two in particular and Eoin Lowry keep their place in the team for the game against Wexford. Win, lose or draw it will give them valuable experience of the cut and thrust of championship football. It should also raise the game of the more established players who would not have the easy ride to the first 15 as they seemed to have in the past and (you would hope) burst a gut to get back into the team when given a chance.
End of the day the goal at the start of the year was achieved, we got promoted after winning Division 4. We played some awesome stuff in first half against Carlow but you can see that we are a work in progress. That will only come after another year or two with John at the helm.
The kickouts I feel have been a problem for a number of years and the lack of people showing for it is telling. This like other areas (use of the ball when in possession for example) are something that would probably take a good year to get to grips with.
Its always the second year that you see the real improvements in a managerial setup (think McGeeney at Kildare and Gilroy at Dublin who were brutal in the first year), but there is definately grounds for optimism!

[Lads in the development squads need to be shown how to tackle, defend and track runners]

Can anyone tell me if lads are trained to tackle and defendefend? Does it happen at club level?

Bringing 13 men behind a ball for the sake of it isn't defending and it's lazy. Lads in the development squads need to be shown how to tackle, defend and track runners. It's our biggest problem.

Just picking up on the above point from Butch.
Of the three areas mentioned (tackle, defend and track runners), the only item where skill is needed is tackling in my opinion. Defending is more of a tactic whose success relies heavily (but not solely) on the skill of tackling.

Of the three, the one I feel needs the least work is tracking runners. To me good fitness and attitude is all a player needs for this, not hours on the training ground or countless drills at a young age.
If you look at all the points we conceded this year (and actually going back a number of years) how many of these were scored by lads who had all the time in the world to steady themselves, then take the shot without a single Laois player within yards of them simply as a result of sprinting (in some cases jogging) down the pitch unopposed.

Getting lads to track back should be the easiest of the above points to do. If we have them at a decent fitness level and the player wants to burst a gut to get back, it should be enough to see off most teams.