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Good option there Merman wasn't that system ran in 2012 with two groups and group placing determining what stage you enter the championship at? I think it was a 10 team championship then with Ballyfin and Abbeyleix being relegated that year.

I would love to see the introduction of some well organised amalgamations to. Some similar to Cork where junior and intermediate clubs get the chance to hurl senior and be competitive.

The Tinnahinch experiment certainly worked in its early years and with some luck would have heralded a championship.I know with my own club at under-age we hurl under the Na Fianna banner a combination of Emo,Mountmellick,Ballyfin and Clonaslee. Logistically it may be difficult to organise but I think using these as an example there would be enough interest to make it happen.

Anyone any opinions on these? I know the Castletown/Sliabh Bloom arrangement didn't work well but if it were more a "divisional" set-up without a club losing its identity it may just be worth looking at

I disagree that it was poor decision making on Dwyers part. it was into injury time and a very strong wind. The free was under the stand out around midfield. It was very intelligent hurling to try work it in which they so nearly did.

On the BK issue they seemed to have no appetite what so ever for the occasion. They played a game which suits Ballacolla down to the ground. Low intensity plenty of space kinda hurling. Its a game which in turn might not be what Ballacolla wanted in terms of going into a county final perhaps without a proper game to focus the minds. Its strange that BK have almost half a panel on the intercounty team yet can only muster that sort of performance in their biggest game of the year.

In terms of the standard of hurling I think the 8 team championship definitely has improved teams and that can obviously only be a good thing.

One last gripe and its an old reliable one! The standard of referee is still shockingly poor in the county. Our top official Stapleton did his best to keep BK in the game Sunday and Saturday night we had the comedy show that is Pat Moran reffing Clonaslee and Ballyfin. How Darren Rooney wasnt sent off is baffling. Yet he was only shown a yellow card and rewarded with his free being brought up 10 yards. Unbelievable stuff 

Camross were not near their "best" simply because they were not given freedom to hurl. The half back line midfield and half forward line of Ballinakill worked tirelessy until the end. in the middle they have two of the counties most intelligent hurlers in James Walsh and Seamus Dwyer add Chas scoring ability they very nearly got there with Camross getting a couple of great late scores to win it. I don't think Cha "bottled" the last effort to equalize either. there was an extremely strong wind there and that coupled with the matches exertions he probably thought working it closer to goal was a better option. I think Camross will gain more from this than Ballacolla will have after their victory.

Games were polar opposites in terms of any sort of intensity. Ballacolla never once looked in trouble and have in Willie Dunphy probably the most dangerous forward in the county with ball in hand. Hyland and tom Delaney were also excellent and it will be an intriguing final.

The senior B semis Saturday night were a drab affair. Mounthrath had Portlaoise under pressure at half time however you always felt Portlaoise would pull away and that they did. Hard to see them not beating Clonaslee who caused a minor upset in dispatching a woeful Ballyfin. I thought at half time something similar to the first game, that after all Clonaslees industry ballyfin would simply pull away however it never happened and Clonaslee deserved their win. The standard here was quite poor and Clonaslee must improve 10 fold to avoid a hiding in the final.

I'm not so sure about that. Portlaoise ableit convincing against Ballyfin the other night should have been beaten by Rosenallis in the 1st round and are not completely above Ballyfin or the other top teams in the senior B quality wise.

The major advantage the relegated teams have is huge amounts of senior experience which cannot be trained. Look how well Abbeyleix have done since they were promoted in '13. The sort of experience they have garnered over the past two years is invaluable. Ballyfin,Colt Mounthrath et al are crying out for that sort of hurling and a 10 team championship may be an idea. However I do also agree that the aforementioned all need to make big improvements to be deemed as a senior team.

Hard to fathom a comment about  people being hard on Mulhare He was absolutely and utterly out of his depth and was completely at fault for 5 red cards in what was over all a very poor game. He let some heavy tackles go early on which went unpunished against St Josephs and frustration grew from there. Would Mulhare have been given Arles/Graigue or Portlaoise/Stradbally over the weekend? Of course not a complete lack of respect shown to both Josephs and Ballyfin by the county board and we wonder about the standard of football in the county then

Lack of physcial size ties in with us having a much smaller pick than the bigger counties. Galway Tipp KK can have the pick of a lot more players than we do simple as that.

Strength can be trained but height unfortunately is what you are born with. Reilly, Healy, Stapleton,  Joe ,Dwayne, Cha and Tommy to mention a few regular starters are all under 6 ft. All good hurlers but pair them with an equals in hurling terms from the bigger counties and 9/10 they will lose a physical confrontaion because the Dublin and Galways of this world simply have as good a hurlers but also dwarf us in size.

From writing this post I'd actually be interested in the average height of the panel. Just out of curiosity and compare it to the top 3 teams in the country!

Excellent post Merman.

Just a note re Abbeyleix. I think league form cannot be used as a form guide. Abbeyleix finished 3rd from bottom in 1A last year and should have beaten the county champions the first day. Their defeat to Portlaoise is demoralising but Portlaoise to be fair would consider themselves a top 4 senior team let alone Senior B.

I can't see Rathdowney being in too much bother against Abbeyleix but for both the Senior championships I think league form has to be discounted especially given the unavailability of county players for the majority of the league games.

Would be great to see a new team make a breakthrough someone like Ballinakill but the sheer panel sizes of Camross,Ballacolla and R/E make them the teams to beat. Relegation could be interesting. losing the first round game is massive. Abbeyleix , The Harps and Castletown will all be keen to avoid that quagmire at all costs.

In the Senior B this weekend you have Portlaoise v Rosenallis and B/K v Colt.

Portlaoise are obviously hot favourites to return to the senior ranks at the first time of asking. Rosenallis are a young side with some quality in their ranks but not enough to bother Portlaoise. Portlaoise by 10-12 for me.

Colt suffered a horrific Division 1 campaign but as said league form goes out the window now and may have had the handier draw of the 8 with B/K second string especially with BK 1st team out this weekend as well. BK had a fine win over Shanahoe in Division 2 league final and Colt will depend heavily for scores on Murray. Will be tight be I'd expect Colt to shade it.

In the last two games of the round played on the weekend of the 25th Ballyfin play Mountrath and Shanahoe play Clonaslee.

Mountrath were last years beaten finalists yet endured a torrid 1A this year losing 5 out of 6 with the only victory being over R/E second string in their final game to avoid the drop. They will depend heavily on Dan Russell again for scores and this may be their downfall as they don't seem to have many others that trouble the scoreboard. Ballyfin will be without Sean Lowry from what I hear (knee trouble) but have a couple of quality players up from Na Fiannas minor victory last year as well as George Lanham up front should do enough to keep the scoreboard ticking. Their 1A form isnt too hot either suffering a heavy defeat in the semi final to Abbeyleix but again league form will go out the window in this local derby and again I can't see much between the sides. A draw for me!

Clonaslee and Shanahoe will be a physical battle with who ever is disciplined enough to keep the free count down likely to win. Leigh Bergin scored some 15 points in the Division 2 league final with a large portion from frees so Clonaslee be warned. Darren Rooney back at 6 for Clonaslee will stiffen the spine of their defence up no end but there are talks of Will Young gone to the states and he would be a huge loss. Shanahoe to win here for me between 4 and 6.

Here is to a great club championship. Be great to hear from other posters on the other championships ie junior and intermediate. Often times these forums only concentrate on the Senior championship with little or no coverage given elsewhere. Match reports, predictions and  banter are all welcome to keep the interest in all levels of Laois hurling strong!

A bit of tedious tangent ye are gone off on lads 

Fantastic progress has been made yet still there would be no one out there willing to commit t as much as Plunkett has to the cause and no one else more importantly who would get anything else out of these players. A mangers tenure generally runs its course like Critchley with the minors but i don't think this is the case with Cheddar. I believe his has more in him its just up to him personally to state that. There is only so much physically one man can invest in a job and has has done more than any manager ever across the country in the modern game. To get us out of the doldrums where we were to a point we are whining about a defeat to Dublin is a testament to the progress and to the man.

In relation to your continuous bashing of a sweeper system Finbar I will again say we simply do not have the quality of hurlers to compete 15 on 15. Physical size was a huge issue pardon the pun against Dublin. Imagine we did go man for man. Would you be confident every man picked was going to win their battle and thus not allow overlaps to happen? I wouldn't be in anyway confident of that. I am the first to admit it is horribly frustrating to watch when it breaks down but we are hurling in a way that gives us some chance of being competitive against better teams.

To be completely honest we simply do not have enough quality hurlers available. The All Ireland contenders ie those left in the All Ireland series how many of those are represented by 8-9 clubs? Not many if you look through the team sheet and panels. Kilkenny for example in yesterdays Leinster final had 18 clubs represented in their match day panel and team. Ballyhale had 5 members on the panel and they are All Ireland champions yet Borris Kilcotton have 7 or 8 on a panel and have never won a county championship in Laois. I have nothing against BK personally i am using them as an example. We simply cannot compete as we do not have enough hurlers hurling at a quality level. How many lads are on the panel outside of the 8 senior teams in 2015. A couple of Portlaoise lads and a Sliabh Bloom lad.

You can only work with what you have so in that regard we aint doing too badly. I suppose some of our posters on here and our fans need to be realistic with the future direction of our team. Not to be just happy with our lot but be a little more realistic with regard to the cards we are playing with

O Neills site currently selling some Laois gear at very reasonable rates. A lot cheaper than Colgans!

https://www.oneills.com/sale/gaa-sale.html#/sale/gaa-sale.html?p=5

When it goes as badly on the scoreboard as it did Saturday there will always be venting!! Its only natural.

However us playing sweepers in the past 3 years has been nothing new. We had 2 huge championship performances against Galway before playing the sweeper/sweepers nothing change Saturday only Galway were wiser to it and punished us accordingly as did Clare in '13 and Waterford in '14. After defeats like that the 15 on 15 brigade come out. However we went 15 on 15 in the Fox, Rigney, Fennelly and McCarthy days and received some unbelievable trimmings.

We do not have 15 players to match the Dublin's and Galway's of this world. The players are used to this system now and it has given them real stability in which to compete with the better teams.

I am not defending it just stating facts. Of course i would love to see us compete man for man but even our minors Sunday went toe to toe with Kilkenny and were blown out of the water.

Time to get real in fairness

So I heard. Right thing to do IMO

Home draw is massive however the manner of defeat of both teams by Galway could be telling. Looking at form lines realistically Dublin were within a score able free of defeating Galway the first day and Galway tanked us by 20. Dublin were completely off the pace as we were in the replay.In all honesty we are not 20 points worse than Galway but on the other hand I don't think we are 2 points off them as last years result. Galway will be in the shake up for the All Ireland come September.

Dublin will have had ample time to reflect on what happened and rectify it and will see us as a perfect place to launch their season. They are probably 6 or 7Th in the Liam McCarthy pecking order and will pose a formidable challenge however we have shown before that we perform at our very best in O Moore park and as said this is a huge advantage to us.

The players reaction from Saturdays thumping will be vital. Unfortunately personnel wise we haven't many changes to make. Our first 15 minutes was encouraging but the wheels came off after the fluke of a goal. Only one or two lads came out of it with any sort of happiness with their individual performance. Deploying 2 sweepers is not unheard by us but the use of the ball by Campion and Maher was poor and you would wonder why Maher was deployed in this role.Whelan on Canning never worked and one wonders why such a physically imposing player like Whelan is so often times  seemingly bullied and never shows massive aggression towards his direct opponent. A lot of calls for us to go the traditional route of 15 on 15 but unfortunately against the real quality we do not have enough in the tank to win these 1 on 1 battles and that's where problems start.

Possibly we got swept away with the emotion of the fantastic victory against Offaly but in hindsight how poor were Offaly? As Cheddar has always said though there will be bumps in the road and we must learn from these experiences.

Unfortunately you make your own luck and we were never in the position to make it.

In both halves our half forward line simply could not win any possession. Bergin from Portlaoise was trying to take puck outs down with his hurl... on his hurl FFS in Nowlan Park of all places. We looked ill prepared again for a team that could actually hurl on the move. Striking was poor across the board and decision making was terrible. Not one lad performed as they can. Full back line did reasonably well considering the space allowed in front of them for balls to be placed.

As much as it hurts to admit you would have to agree with some of Wildcats sentiments. For all our apparent advances at underage levels we still haven't beaten a Kilkenny as of yet. For me they are the benchmark at underage level. Critchely has done a wonderful job implementing the setanta and Cuchulain programme but perhaps he has taken the minor group for one year too long and needs to let fresh blood in at this level. As far as I'm aware Lee Cleere, David Connolly the two Dunphys, Robbie Phelan and Stephen Phelan are under-age next year so on this basis the spine of next years minors should be strong. A new voice and fresh ideas is what may be required to drive us to that elusive first Leinster win

1. Stephen Kelly (Rosenallis)
2. Joe Geaney (Portlaoise)
3. Conor Phelan (Castletown)
4. David Connolly (Ballyfin)
5. Liam O'Connell (Rathdowney Errill)
6. Denis Cahill (Park Ratheniska)
7. Lee Cleere (Clough Ballacolla)
8. Seán Downey (Ballinakill)
9. Stephen Dunphy (Borris-in-Ossory-Kilcotton)
10. Stephen Phelan (Borris-in-Ossory-Kilcotton)
11. Martin Phelan (Castletown)
12. Aaron Bergin (Portlaoise)
13. Mark Kavanagh (Rathdowney Errill)
14. Robbie Phelan (Clough Ballacolla)
15. Aaron Dunphy (Borris-in-Ossory-Kilcotton)

Team named for Sunday throw at the strange throw in time of 12 o clock.

David Connolly starts at 4 and will bring speed to the area.

Aaron Dunphy has been released from his sentence at centre back and will quality to the forward line. Dinny Cahill is not a natural centre back with the obvious choice to swap himself and Conor Phelan at 3 and 6 and a swift change if things arnt working here should suffice. In Cleere and o Connell we have 2 of the best young minors in the country who I just hope can improve their delivery to the forwards

Massive potential in this team and definitely have the hurlers to get a win here however concentration will be key. Fall asleep for 15 minutes like we did against Offaly and we will be buried. I hope the sideline are quick to rectify scenarios if things are going against us unlike the Offaly match. Quality of ball into our forwards has to improve and performances like Downey at midfield and Phelan at centre forward cannot be tolerated for 50 - 55 minutes as they were in the quarter final.

We could be looking at a Leinster final if we get one hell of a performance and I just have the feeling we may sneak it.

There will definitely be changes.

Could not see that full forward line starting in any capacity. Scully and Conroy were poor in the U21 against Carlow and Tommy has been poor all year.

You would expect Picky or Foyle to be in there and Tommy to do a large amount of cover work which he shows a great appetite for in fairness to him.

Moral victory will not suffice Sunday after the last two years near misses. A win is required. At any cost.