Messages

Niall Tully is a coach and has a good reputation in the county, plenty of the laois minors who wont all irelands in the 90s would have been trained by him at school level (he was a teacher in Ballyfin) and players speak very highly of him Don is right he is not from Laois, he a meath man.

Antrims hammering today really underlines TOF's reign as a failure.

Martin Mchugh?? He managed Cavan to ulster title in 1997, thats a world away from the level needed to compete in todays game to be fair. He turned down his own county also so would hardly take up a county like ourselves anyway. Also with regards to the underage setup, being successful is not what it is all about, as Dapper Dan said being competitive is whats important, each year a minor team should produce 2/3 players good enough to be top senior level players.

If they win trophies at underage level fine but not the end of the world, Ross Munnelly was hardly on successful underage teams yet he is one of the best senior players we ever produced. Also look at the Westmeath team that took Meath apart in the second half at the weekend, they have hardly being uprooting trees at underage recently yet they had plenty of youthful talent on the pitch who were well coached and unlike Laois this year did not fall apart when all looked lost. I think our panel (even without absentees this year) is every bit as good if not better than Westmeaths yet they are on a high looking forward to a Leinster final while we must enjoy our armchairs and high stools for the rest of the summer

TOF was certainly found out, he was found out before the Laois job in fairness. Whats needed is a good management team. Good managers surround themselves with good people and delegate all the roles creating a professional set up where nothing is left to chance. Justin Mcnulty had such a set up but his failing was tactically going forward he had very little ideas, the best example was the quarter final against Dublin where we ran them very close but I never once really thought we would win it.

I dont mind given outside managers a chance once they are proven but i can t think of any ones out there that are available. But we have some good coaches and managers working hard in Laois. My club Kilcavan had Derek Conroy for example for a few years, he also did a decent job with the u-21s this year, not the best tactically attacking wise similar to Mcnulty but he was very organised and an excellent defensive coach. I would like to see a management team of Joe Higgins and a few others like Conway, Conroy. These are proud Laois men who would know every player in the county regardless of grade. If they gave half what they gave as players we would do very well indeed.

I also agree that the underage structure needs help as we seem to be producing very few new talents in recent years, Sean Dempsey may have been found wanting at senior level but the man did great work at underage and should be in charge of this.

I think the big thing against galway was the physical size of them, some of the laois lads looked like minors against them. Dublin gave Galway a decent game in first match but as we know thats the time to catch Galway cold, and this year they were up and running. I think we also stuck to the defensive side of things for too long, we were 7/8 points down and playing with two lads back in the first half, have to be able to adapt better. Hopefully the players can lift themselves once more and give the Dubs a good rattle

There are worse county sides out there than Laois lads, I think Laois are definitely better than they have shown under O Flatharta although the last two defeats may have long term affect on the players.
At the minute we are a mid table division 2 team and have some high quality players in the shape of  JOL, Kingston and Quigley (and was very impressed with O'Carroll) but unfortunately we have a small pool of players with very little talent coming though which is what is needed to keep the thing fresh. From what i seen this year there is potential in the team and next managerial appointment is vital and get all the players in the county pulling in one direction. That is all that really happened when Micko came on board (although much better pool of players back then), the year before we were hammered by Meath and then we win Leinster, now im under know illusion we will be winning a Leinster but we could certainly compete against the majority of teams and maybe get ourselves up to Div 1 with a serious appointment, but as posters have said it is not the most attractive of posts and cant think of too many top candidates off the top of my head.

Think some of the comments here are a bit harsh. Laois are a decent intercounty side, not in the same league as the likes of kerry, dublin etc in terms of quality but they give a lot with what they have got. The fact that Ross is still there tells a lot about the quality of players coming through.

We all hear about the lack of Portlaoise players on the team but the fact is very few would make much of a difference. Wolly Parkinson even admitted this on off the ball recently. Healy would make a big improvement but he is committed to the hurlers.

Given our current squad im not sure how much more we could improve with a new manager. The players give everything so i commend their commitment. In fairness we were caught with a blitz, but we should have been much further ahead by this point. Kildare knew they got out of jail in the first half and caught us napping.