You put your building blocks in from the ground up. Underage needs to be the priority and increasing both the numbers, competitiveness and coaching at underage needs to be our focus. To do this we need to really invest in GDOs and supporting clubs in coaching and developing players. It is evident that traditional powerhouse clubs like St. Joseph's, Stradbally, Graigue and Portlaoise are capable of producing far, far more than they currently are. Portlaoise should be fielding three teams minimum at each level with the population at its disposal. Towns of a similar size in other counties would have multiple clubs all capable of fielding A and B teams at the different age groups. We need to invest heavily and support these clubs in upping their standards at underage. In doing this, it will raise the standards our our county underage teams and ultimately feed into our senior team. In order to improve, players need to be regularly playing games at a high standard. If we can get 7/8 highly competitive teams facing one another regularly at u13, u15 and minor it is going to have a positive knock on effect. If you look at the minor championship last year in Laois, outside of Ballyroan-Abbey-a lot of teams playing the 'A' championship were way off the required standard to be considered a truly competitive 'A' standard team.
I feel that our anger at the county board has let some of the players off the hook for what was an abysmal showing in the second half. The county board or the manager is not the fault when players don't have the fight in them when things are going against them on the field. Too often, over the last decade when Laois teams have come under pressure in championship football they have folded. I'm now questioning is it something in our mentality. Antrim 2015 when threw away an eight point lead, Kildare 2017 where Kildare forwards were kicking points for fun in the second half, Clare dismantling us in a qualifier in Portlaoise and Meath 2019 when we failed to put up any real challenge in a Leinster semi final are games that quickly come to mind. I can accept losing but it is the manner in how we lose certain games that is very disheartening. Quirke did as well as he could with the hand that he was dealt is my opinion on things. We have plenty of players in the county who are capable of playing division 3/4 football. We lack those 5/6 marquee players that every mid rank team with aspirations of playing at a higher level need to drive things forward and make the difference on the field. In fairness to Westmeath in the likes of Heslin and Ger Egan they have those players who can inspire, step up and drive the team forward.
