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There's an onus on clubs to step up also as regards facilities

How many clubs in Laois have stands?

How many clubs in Laois have decent floodlights?

How many clubs in Laois have scoreboards?

How many clubs in Laois have decent level playing surfaces?

You go to most of our neighbours and clubs are well equipped and well appointed

It's not all the clubs fault here at the same time as in those other counties,they don't have all their club games rammed into the county ground

Instead games are played in the club grounds and those clubs get some of the gate which they invest back into their facilities

Club games for so many different reasons need to be taken out of OMP and played in grounds around the county

Here's the 2018-2020 Plan

https://laoisgaa.ie/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/Laois-GAA-Strategic-and-Action-Plan-2018-2020.pdf

Scroll down to page 19 to see how many of these have been implemented and these should have all been implemented 3 years ago at this point

The silence from the County Board is deafening. We need to hear from them. Their reaction to Sunday's debacle should not be kept behind closed doors. They need to talk to the wider Laois GAA public.

They owe it to the people who buy the jerseys, the match day tickets, even those who support Laois GAA by entering the All County Draw. Most of these people do not have access to secretive County Board meetings.

Every person in clubs in the county need to start speaking to their county board delegates and impress on their views as to how serious the current situation is

Hard honest conversations need to be had

It doesn't for me, because I start from a fundamentally different viewpoint as you and JD. The real crime for me is the lack of preparation at underage. The way we treat our best footballers and hurlers who we hope one day will represent us at Senior level. It seemed obvious to me that Down were more athletic in every sense of the word. The sort of athleticism that is nurtured over many years

And we will be having the same conversation in 10 years time as we are having now if underage in this county isn't addressed

Whether you are Billy Sheehan or Jack O'Connor or Mickey Harte

You are prisoner to what's coming off the underage assembly line

The underage set up is at best mediocre and at worst downright shambolic across the various development teams in both codes

The Schools and in particular the second level  schools in Portlaoise are nothing short of a disgrace

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

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

As hurtful as the situation is, some of the comments I see under Laois Today Facebook posts and Laois GAA's posts on Twitter are completely counter productive. Can't believe some people would actually put their name to what they're saying. Absolute cretins.

Say what you will about todays performance and the lads involved with that team, but they were the ones that stuck their hands up in January and wanted to play for Laois. Some of them, naturally, won't be involved going forward. If this was Mark Timmons' last game for Laois then that's a real shame - absolute warrior who would've made it on any Laois team.

As for the game itself, well Down did what Limerick probably ought to have done last week and scored a ton of goals. It was clear to anyone watching last week that we were far too open and soft in the centre and we ultimately paid a heavy price for that today.

It just goes to show the level of frustration and anger in the county that people are willing to put their names to the comments

I might not agree with some of what is being said

But I'd take it over apathy

Whether it's just a one day wonder and anything is done is another story

Whichever of the Portumna neighbours has the better backs will win. If Shefflin doesn't sort out the Galway backs he will never get the Kilkenny job. I mo thuairim

Tipp v Galway too close to call but I'm going to plump for Tipp, but they'll need to stop Conor Whelan whose hitting a bit of form after a few underpar performances.

Going for the Clare men in the other game by about 5 or so, but in modern terms that's a tight game also.

I'd say Barrett's the man for Whelan. Good battle there.

He definitely wasn't

Think of it in 'their' shoes, its not difficult, they are British and want to stay British, and you can throw every benefit at it.

Who do you mean by 'their'?
Unionism is a broad family - Loyalists, traditional Unionists, pragmatic Unionists, Catholic Unionists, cultural Unionists, agnostic/de facto Unionists (eg Alliance).

While every one of those need to be welcomed into any new Irish state, it's only those that form part of the middle ground that need persuading.

By the very term unionist they want to remain part of the union, You can at the very least see where they are coming from? You'd never willing want to stay in the union..

The closer it gets to the border question/poll/deliberation/implementation the place will be completely divided..

What are the timeframes for this? 10/20/30 years?

Best to not upset them and to leave NI as it is then

Let's run the place into the ground so that the south can't afford us but we will be poor, British and happy seem to be their singular strategy

No wonder they are so against the Protocol because it is doing the opposite

We were poor but we were happy. 

Poor,Happy and British

You're saying that like there's no food banks or plenty of affordable housing in the south

And that's McWilliams point

We in the south should be exploiting Northern Ireland with its cheap housing and cheap labour for the good of an all Ireland economy

" But here is the opportunity. The Republic has too much demand and not enough supply; the North has too much supply and not enough demand. Integrate further and gains accrue to both jurisdictions.

Take commercial rents, which are far lower in the North. Prime rents in Belfast are £23 (€26.73) per sq ft as opposed to €65 in Dublin. Surely this gap can be bridged as companies move? The average monthly rent in the North is £773 (about €900), as opposed to the average rent in the Republic, which stands at €1,750 – almost double that in Northern Ireland. The average cost of a home in Northern Ireland is £197,800 (€229,902); it is €308,497 in the South."

Think of it in 'their' shoes, its not difficult, they are British and want to stay British, and you can throw every benefit at it.

Who do you mean by 'their'?
Unionism is a broad family - Loyalists, traditional Unionists, pragmatic Unionists, Catholic Unionists, cultural Unionists, agnostic/de facto Unionists (eg Alliance).

While every one of those need to be welcomed into any new Irish state, it's only those that form part of the middle ground that need persuading.

By the very term unionist they want to remain part of the union, You can at the very least see where they are coming from? You'd never willing want to stay in the union..

The closer it gets to the border question/poll/deliberation/implementation the place will be completely divided..

What are the timeframes for this? 10/20/30 years?

Best to not upset them and to leave NI as it is then

Let's run the place into the ground so that the south can't afford us but we will be poor, British and happy seem to be their singular strategy

No wonder they are so against the Protocol because it is doing the opposite

We were poor but we were happy. 

Poor,Happy and British

Think of it in 'their' shoes, its not difficult, they are British and want to stay British, and you can throw every benefit at it.

Who do you mean by 'their'?
Unionism is a broad family - Loyalists, traditional Unionists, pragmatic Unionists, Catholic Unionists, cultural Unionists, agnostic/de facto Unionists (eg Alliance).

While every one of those need to be welcomed into any new Irish state, it's only those that form part of the middle ground that need persuading.

By the very term unionist they want to remain part of the union, You can at the very least see where they are coming from? You'd never willing want to stay in the union..

The closer it gets to the border question/poll/deliberation/implementation the place will be completely divided..

What are the timeframes for this? 10/20/30 years?

Best to not upset them and to leave NI as it is then

Let's run the place into the ground so that the south can't afford us but we will be poor, British and happy seem to be their singular strategy

No wonder they are so against the Protocol because it is doing the opposite

McWilliams is married to a northern Protestant woman and knows the mentality of them all right. I'm sure his in-laws have seen to that. Always an insightful bit of commentary.

McWilliams is an entertainer first and an economist second. Much like Brolly the Wally, they're in showbusiness. If you want to get paid for talks and panel gigs you gotta say stuff to get you in the limelight.

The point of Northern Ireland is not prosperity. Right now, among unionist politicians, the central strategy seems to centre on the immiseration of the people in order to inflate the likely future cost of any united Ireland, so as to scare off lukewarm nationalists of "middle Ireland". How else can you interpret the oft-heard expression "The South can't afford us" other than "We" are going to remain impoverished as a negotiating strategy? It doesn't matter what sort of poverty we endure as long as it's red, white and blue poverty. It's worthy of Flann O'Brien.

However, this tactic is not working because the story of the past 25 years since the signing of the Belfast Agreement has been the quiet, modest but obvious success of the integration of the island economy. Commerce always finds a way. Thirty thousand people cross the Border every day to go to work. Since Brexit, and through the Covid years, cross-Border trading has increased. In 2021, Ireland exported €3.7 billion to Northern Ireland and imported €4 billion, a significant increase from 2020, when exports stood at about €2.5 billion. Imports from Northern Ireland to the Republic also increased, Central Statistics Office (CSO) data shows.
Overall, exports to Northern Ireland as a proportion of all Irish exports to the UK increased from 16 per cent to 23 per cent in the past two years. Similarly, the share of UK imports coming from Northern Ireland has shot up. Politics might be trying to create borders, but trade is doing its own thing.
The orientation of trade in Northern Ireland has been transformed by Brexit. The Republic is Northern Ireland's single largest export market, accounting for 40 per cent of total exports outside exports to Britain. Before Brexit, Northern Ireland exports to Britain were 3.7 times greater than exports to the Republic; now that figure is only 2.5 times greater. Trade between both parts of the island is flourishing. The value of exports from Northern Ireland to the Republic increased by 23 per cent between 2020 and 2021, according to the Northern Ireland Statistics and Research Agency (NISRA); a much larger increase than the change in total exports.
Brexit is not a wedge between both parts of the island. Rather, it has proved to be a bridge – precisely what the protocol is designed to do. Northern Ireland has the best of both worlds, one foot in the EU and one in the UK.

But there is a long way to go.
The Troubles are estimated to have reduced Northern Ireland's GDP by up to 10 per cent. However, in the quarter century since the Belfast Agreement, a real divergence emerged between the North and South. Economic indicators make it abundantly clear that the peace dividend went to the South.
From 1998 to 2021, the Northern Ireland economy expanded by about 38 per cent in real terms, considerably less than the Republic. Even taking the GNI (gross national income) measure, which strips out the distorting effects of multinationals on the economy, the Irish economy has grown by about 83 per cent in real terms, more than double the rate of the North.

Central to this economic underperformance of the North relative to the Republic is its poor productivity performance. Productivity is the key to driving improvements in living standards, and Northern Ireland has the worst productivity (measured in terms of output per hours worked) of any UK region, about 17 per cent below the UK average as a whole. (The UK itself is among the worst performing economies in the OECD.) In contrast, productivity per worker is about 40 per cent higher in the Republic relative to the North. Wages can't rise when productivity is so low, which explains why wages are so much lower in the North, running on average about 64 per cent of those in Ireland.

Definitely worth a listen

David McWilliams Podcast

The Unionist Strategy against a United Ireland ....Poverty

https://open.spotify.com/episode/21gxBKirO4AEHr0wbG1Pkd?si=__CA_cPmT36YKdiBfX5lOw

Is Croke not an option ?

The logical choice would

Tipp v Galway in Limerick

Clare v Dublin in Portlaoise

There's nothing to gained by having a double header in a half or even third full Croke Park and dragging 2 counties from the west across the country to Dublin

Double header in Nowlan Park or Limerick Gaelic Grounds, Cork have a home football game on so that ruled out.

Nowlan not a runner

Capacity 27,500