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Couldn't have got an 'easier' draw really.

Portlaoise have been so far ahead that Zac's involvement didn't make much of a difference.

There's great rivalry between the two towns so it will be an interesting final.

I wouldn't be so sure. Would depend on what the hurling set up is going to be like. He admits that hurling is his first love.

Also, he has been travelling back and forth for the last few years from UK what's to say he will continue to do this. I know he is a proud and determined Laois man but that's tough going.

Never heard that about slurry being spread by the Brennans the day of Chris Conways wedding. And robbing the greyhound and painting it black and white.

I do know that there were plenty of rows in Pedigree Corner back in the day that were directly as a result of the split. All the younger club members would have drank there at the time. It got very bitter with rows and arguments a regular occurence.

Article from the Times back in 2003.

From The Sunday Times
November 23, 2003
Kilcruise relight fire amid the fury

A Laois community was split in two by a dispute at the local club. Now the whole county is united behind their pursuit of Leinster glory, writes Michael Foley
Two years ago, driving through Arles from his home in Kildare for the first time on his way to training, Jim Maguire noticed there was nothing to notice. In the village, he saw a church and the Tall Trees pub. He saw a derelict shop on one side of the road and a few houses collected near the pub. Out the road he came across the pitch, lined out on the side of a gentle incline on a lush part of James Kealy's farm, with a cargo container acting as a dressing room and clubhouse.
This was Arles-Kilcruise. They had little but their spirit, and a stubborn belief in themselves. They had known times as bad as they could ever have been, but now unimaginable things seemed possible. The spirit among the players was intense and seeped into every vein of the community. On the muckiest training nights, knots of locals would linger on the sidelines. The team knew they needed the cold input of an outsider, but it took Maguire, a new co-manager, time to cut his way into their trust.

"They were absolute fanatics for football," says Maguire. "For a club like them to achieve what they have they'd have to be."
The last two weekends have brought those unthinkable dreams to life. Last Saturday Arles-Kilcruise won their first Laois county senior title. The following afternoon they beat O'Hanrahans of Carlow in the Leinster club championship and this afternoon they play Round Towers in a Leinster semi-final.
Less than a decade ago, Arles didn't exist. Three years ago they had no field and almost saw their very existence crushed by a judge's gavel. But they found the resolve to survive, nurture their footballers and live the dream. This is their day.
Arles parish holds about 300 houses and three clubs, which carve those thin resources between them. On one side of Arles-Kilcruise sits Ballylinan, on the other Arles-Killeen. For 30 years the parish had two clubs, Arles and Ballylinan. For years Arles existed in happy obscurity. In 1974 they reached a county semi-final, but it was a rare spark that was quickly extinguished.

Larry Wall captained Arles in 1974, and soon after began calling to Arles national school to coach football. He still turns up every Friday evening, his enthusiasm hardly sapped by the years. The school houses about 40 children and two teachers and provided every player on Kilcruise's current panel. Wastage is considered a crime. No player with even an ounce of talent is left untapped.
Wall's household led the way. His own son Jim played until his mid-teens but after a few years he let it slide. His father worked on him over the year, and eventually he returned. Then a few years ago he broke his leg so badly that he had to have a plate inserted in it, yet he still lined out in midfield last weekend.
"When you drive through the big towns like Portlaoise, with maybe 20,000 people," says Larry, "or see the big clubs like Stradbally or Portarlington, they'd have more in one street than we have in our whole catchment area, but we'd make a team out of what they'd waste. We bring everyone on board and make the most of them."

The circumstances demanded they must. At a meeting in 1993, a group of members from the Killeen side of the parish proposed the club name be changed to Arles-Killeen in order to recognise the input from that end of the parish. Others couldn't understand their gripe. There was talk that the new name might attract a few more players. A vote was taken, and the proposal was passed. Those present who objected — the Kilcruise people — walked out of the meeting, and never came back. The club was ripped in two. At least the Kilcruise group still had people like Wall to fall back on. In 1994, when Laois county board refused to affiliate them while affiliating the rest of the old Arles club under the name of St Michael's, they decided to keep going.
"We tried to hold the club together ourselves," says current chairman JJ Conway. "We knew we had talented young players so we just tried to keep those bunch of players active. We played around 20 challenge matches in 1994. We were only a bunch of junior lads but we went wherever we could get a game."
The following year, the Laois football board decided to affiliate them as a junior B club under the name Arles. Wall took on the job as manager, and has been there since. That year they won the county title. In 1996 Beano McDonald brought home an All-Ireland minor medal to St Michael's, while JJ's son Chris brought one back to Arles, who won the junior A title. Now they were intermediate, and level with their neighbours.
Relations had been tolerable, but both sides kept their distance. The Tall Trees was evacuated by the Kilcruise people, who relocated to Kellys in Ballickmoyler out the road. Brothers and neighbours ended up playing for two different clubs. Little things kept relations strained. The clubs shared the local pitch, but found training sessions were clashing. There might be a comment passed, or a dig given in company, but largely the peace was kept.

In 1996, they met in the intermediate final. Thousands came expecting enough dust-ups and spats to fuel decades of rivalry. Instead, the game was a classic. Arles led to the end but St Michael's sneaked ahead to win. It shattered Arles, but the desolation of losing to St Michael's in a football final was nothing compared to the next twist.
In 1999, Arles won the county intermediate title and St Michael's launched an objection to their retention of the name, which mushroomed into a legal action against Laois county board. Seeing as they had walked out of the club, surely, they argued, Arles had no right to the name or any recognition. There was talk of a High Court action. A priest from Wexford was called in to mediate, but he went home shaking his head. All kinds of old skeletons were allowed to escape.
"I was never in the High Court before," says Conway. "I didn't fancy going up with what was a local dispute. A lot of people were very concerned about the consequences of neighbours fighting over a trivial thing in the High Court."

With the case heading there, Croke Park's turbo-powered disputes committee was called in. With the GAA president and chief executive on board, they set to work on bringing the two together. "You wouldn't believe the tension at the meetings," says one source close to the committee. "All sorts of stuff was raked up. It was a community at war."
After a fortnight of the hardest talking, a resolution was reached. The committee agreed that Arles had acted improperly and were duly banished from the local pitch. However, given their thriving existence, they were allowed to continue under the name Arles-Kilcruise, with St Michael's reverting to Arles- Killeen. For under-age games up to under-21 level, the entire parish, including Ballylinan, would play as one team, called Ballylinan- Glenmore.
Last Saturday, they both fetched up on county final day, Kilcruise in the senior, Killeen in the intermediate. For some in Killeen, although they celebrated when they won their final, the day darkened with the senior result. Others have been able to move on.
"We keep our distance," says Conway. "But last Saturday one of them, a prominent man in the club, came up to me and gave me his congratulations, 'from the bottom of my heart,' he said. Some relations still aren't great. We'd be very good friends with some of them, but there'd still be a certain few. They'd be very much in the minority though."

When they came home to celebrate last Saturday, Arles-Kilcruise headed for Kellys, Killeen headed for the Tall Trees. Still, there have always been cracks in the tension. Some can remember Beano McDonald and Chris Conway high-fiving as teammates with the combined under-age team. Wall works happily as part of a three-man team that has brought the under-21s to the county quarter-finals, while the minors have reached the semis.
"As far as I was concerned," says Kilcruise's Ross Munnelly, "I don't see it as going to play with 'those lads'. The team I play with are my teammates, whoever they are. Any differences can't come into it if you want success."
While the mood has mellowed, they still egg each other on. In the league section of the county championship, Arles-Killeen won their game against Kilcruise by a few points, leaving Kilcruise needing a win against Graiguecullen to progress. The defeat shattered them, but tested the true meaning of their desire for the summer.

"We thought we were flying," says Munnelly. "Then they beat the stuffing out of us. In a way we have them to thank. We were able to refocus and get ready for our last match, which we won quite comprehensively. After that match I said to the lads that now I felt we could win the county championship."
"This is the kernel," says Wall. "We're out to prove a point. We couldn't fail. We had to succeed. There was a lot of people saying we should've stayed together, that we shouldn't have split. But we drove on and strove to get to the top."
Now that things they could never imagined have happened, who can ever tell them what can and cannot be? They have done their recent training in nearby Crettyard, but next spring they move to a new pitch. Jim Maguire's approach has got them far fitter, fusing seamlessly with the natural drive of Wall and selector Leo Flanagan. The entire county has rowed in behind them, and this afternoon the support will be bigger than anything they could have dreamed of.
But for all the fighting, their survival is rooted in the purest expression of their devotion. Every Friday, Larry Wall heads for the national school, teaching and coaxing and encouraging. Every evening, as the children go home, he tells them that while they have homework to do for school, they have football homework to do in their back gardens for him, too.

When they start skipping that, then they'll know trouble.

Taken from the friends of Laois Hurling Facebook page.


An open letter from Cheddar:

"In stepping down from the role of Laois Senior hurling team manager I would like to take the opportunity to thank people who were very helpful along the journey.

To begin with I would like to express my gratitude to CLG Laois, and in particular to Chairman Gerry Kavanagh, for affording me the huge honour to manage my county team and for supporting the team. The privilege of leading a group of Laois hurling warriors on championship Sundays will not be surpassed wherever one goes.

I would like to express real gratitude to my fellow management colleagues over the past four years for the support and the dedication they have given to the team and to me personally.

I am also very grateful to the Laois hurling clubs for their support to our county players in their preparations for League and Championship games and I am really thankful to all of the underage coaches in each club who give unstinting and mostly unappreciated service to improving their players so that they are capable of stepping up to senior club and inter-county hurling.

Clubs also made their facilities available to us at different times and this was always done in the most positive and supportive way.

I would also like to pay tribute to all Laois hurling supporters who followed our team to some distant places and though results may not have went our way they patiently turned up again the next day to unconditionally support our players. The support given to the team at our games in O'Moore Park was extra special and memorable and meant an awful lot to the team and management.

I also appreciate the fair and balanced reporting of all of our games by all media outlets. In particular the respect shown to our players by our local newspapers and radio is sincerely acknowledged.

Lastly but most importantly I would particularly like to express my deep gratitude to all the Laois players who committed so earnestly to the Laois senior hurling team for the last four years. I greatly valued the support and respect shown to me and the other members of the management team and I will take very happy memories and lasting friendships from my time as manager.

Your total dedication to the hard training necessary to improve our performance standards and our county's standing, perhaps best demonstrated by your commitment to preparing for the All Ireland qualifiers in each of the four years, is to be admired. It is very easy to do that when you are regularly playing in League, Leinster or All-Ireland finals but when that prize is not as closely within your reach then it needs much greater character and love of place to commit yourself to the task.

Indeed that commitment was even more tested for those players who may not have got the playing opportunities of others. These are the real heroes I admire in every county panel. You are an exceptional group of players and, notwithstanding that CLG Laois has much immediate work to do at development level, I predict a bright future for the present Laois senior hurling team in the coming years.

I believe that the incoming management has a very dedicated and skilful young panel to work with, who will be coming into their peak performance years, and the job now comes with attractions. I would like to wish the new manager and his management team the very best for the future.

I also realise there is some ongoing conversation about the matter but I would prefer that we all move on and instead quickly get on with the work to put in place a new senior management team to lead the team forward in 2017.

Thanks again to everyone for your support.

Yours sincerely

Cheddar"

Lads, ye may not agree with finbar's opinions but no need to be having a go at him personally. He's entitled to his opinion the same as everyone else.

Jaysus lads there's nothin but rumours going around.

Reminds me of the Roy Chubby Brown line where someone comes up to him and says 'Hey Chubby, there's a rumour going around that you've got a 10'' c***! Chubby says ' I know, I started it'

Why the delay, what's stopping this happening next year seeing as most counties have club u17 games this year?

On the hurling post, if there is supposed to be outside investment for the football appointment is it not time that there was a similar arrangement for the hurling post? Surely there are enough people with vested interest to put some money into the set up. What about an umbrella group something like 'Friends of Laois hurling' who would raise funds etc.

All things considered it's a good appointment.

In fairness even under Cheddar it was hard to get Camross lads to commit.

A manager should not be chosen based on whether or not Camross lads will commit.

If Rigney wanted it I'd be happy with that.

He's a better shot than Paul Curran in my opinion.

If the CB wouldn't back him for one more year as senior manager then what's to say they would back him as Director of hurling or whatever role he'd go for. 

Sad to hear Cheddar is gone. Some very memorable days in O'Moore Park. Ogie i would add Clare in the league quarter final to that. When Reddin hit that goal the roof nearly came off of the stand. I really hope Cheddar is given the top job in Laois hurling because once he's involved we'll only get better. It's imperative the CB keep him on.

I would rather see a former laois player take the job than someone like Paul Curran. Will he turn out to be another bluffer like Bealin?