Laois Senior Hurling Championship 2016

[finbar o tool]

For fucks sake lads, after tonights match, and the 1st round matches, i think the format is the least of our worries!! Desperate! 

[oneflewoverthecuckoonest]

without digging too deep

1999 laois senior hurling championship

2 groups of 4....
group a
castletown, rathdowney, clonad, camross

rnd 1
castletown drew with camross, rathdowney bt clonad,

rnd 2
castletown bt clonad,  rathdowney bt camross

rnd 3
castletown bt rathdowney, camross bt clonad

if memory serves, the last game was a dead rubber, and it was one of the few(if only) times that camross were eliminated at group stage.
the harps and portlaoise came out of the other group.


so yes, there you have proof that there did exist 2 groups of 4 as a format in the laois senior hurling championship.

I don't buy the rubbish about extending the senior to ten teams to help mountrath, colt etc.....if they are not good enough and not going to be competitive, all you will be doing is dragging others down to their level. the onus should be on these clubs to improve and strife to join the elite on merit and be competitive.

I admire what abbeyleix have done in hurling now and of late, great work and time being invested in the sport in the town. however I find your attitude on the senior hurling format a little defeatist....what you want for abbeyleix, is to increase the number of senior teams to 10, so that your club will always be safe from relegation and each year have at least one handy game, and perhaps one year get a pudding of a group draw with as many as 3 of the makeweights!.....never mind, if you happen to lose your next 2 games, you will have plenty of handy games at senior b next year, if easy winnable games is the endgoal.

[Keyser Söze]

I think you are missing the point there a little Cuckoo.
Also regarding 1999 Laois Senior Hurling Championship.
The following were all Senior at the time
1. Castletown
2. Portlaoise
3. The Harps
4. Clonaslee Gaels
5. Rathdowney
6. Camross
7. Clonad
8. Clough Ballacolla (Intermdiate winners 1998)
Were Errill & Ballinakill Gaels not Senior also?

The fact is that at the moment there is no incentive for the teams ranked 10-15. The gulf is too big and tbh it is designed to be kept that way.

8 teams is a nice round number etc and the current format is competitive but that doesn't mean you forget about the teams 10-15.

As an examply- Hurling is dying in Mountrath.
It's actually in a desperate state (irrespective of whether they win, lose or draw v Castletown tomorrow).
Take a look at juvenile results on the Laois website. Minors hammered by Rosenallis in league (6-17 to 3-6) and again in the final (3-17 to 0-4). Beaten by Slieve Margy in championship semi final the other night. They have no U16 team, so they send players to Camross (rumour has it that some won't be returning). U14s won no game in the B league (Slieve Margy, Ballinakill & Camross). They beat Slieve Margy in the Championship and lost to Rosenallis. Play Ballypickas next.
Ballyfin isn't a whole pile better.

Rosenallis, Colt and Clonad are making efforts at juvenile level.
Clonaslee to a certain degree.

There is nobody outside of the current Top 9 going to hurl Senior in Laois with the current format. That cannot be healty.
You can put all of the work you want in at juvenile level but you are at nothing if the system is stacked against you.

Castletown (back in the early 90s) and Clough Ballacolla (back in the early 00s) benefitted from being able to come up Senior and establish themselves. If the current system had of been in place they would have been held back from doing so.
Abbeyleix more recently around 2012 came up and had a realistic chance of staying up, but were relegated. This benefited them.

What is the benefit of having Rathdowney Errill, Abbeyleix, The Harps or Portlaoise hurling Senior A next year?

[Home Boys Home]

without digging too deep

1999 laois senior hurling championship

2 groups of 4....
group a
castletown, rathdowney, clonad, camross

rnd 1
castletown drew with camross, rathdowney bt clonad,

rnd 2
castletown bt clonad,  rathdowney bt camross

rnd 3
castletown bt rathdowney, camross bt clonad

if memory serves, the last game was a dead rubber, and it was one of the few(if only) times that camross were eliminated at group stage.
the harps and portlaoise came out of the other group.


so yes, there you have proof that there did exist 2 groups of 4 as a format in the laois senior hurling championship.

I don't buy the rubbish about extending the senior to ten teams to help mountrath, colt etc.....if they are not good enough and not going to be competitive, all you will be doing is dragging others down to their level. the onus should be on these clubs to improve and strife to join the elite on merit and be competitive.

I admire what abbeyleix have done in hurling now and of late, great work and time being invested in the sport in the town. however I find your attitude on the senior hurling format a little defeatist....what you want for abbeyleix, is to increase the number of senior teams to 10, so that your club will always be safe from relegation and each year have at least one handy game, and perhaps one year get a pudding of a group draw with as many as 3 of the makeweights!.....never mind, if you happen to lose your next 2 games, you will have plenty of handy games at senior b next year, if easy winnable games is the endgoal.

On your last two paragraphs;

You might disagree with someone else's opinion, that doesn't make it rubbish.

Neither do you know what I want for my own club. I have said in earlier posts that the argument for 10 teams was lost for the moment and also that my views on the format of the Laois SHC are not based ensuring "handy games" for my own club.  I don't know why, but for some reason you choose to ignore this and post the above again.

[Home Boys Home]

Camross laid down a marker last night. They were hungry, physical and made sure second half against the wind was played on their terms. Clough Ballacolla played some nice hurling in first half against the wind, but couldn't get any traction in the face of Camross determination and aggression in the second half. Brendan McEvoy and Tom Delaney are being missed. Shane Hanlon aslo didn't play - is he injured ?

Camross have a strong panel too, able to bring in the likes of Dean Delaney and Mattie Collier and are probably favourites now. Clough Ballacolla have the talent to recover and are possibly still the best bet to pip Camross, question is have they hunger to go for it again.

[redsetanta]

Anyone at the BAllinakill v BK game. Was a draw a fair result or could/should one of them have won it?

Decent result for Ballinakill.

Portlaoise and the Harps also drawing. 

[Unlaoised]

I'm going go for a few upsets

Harps to beat Portlaoise

Ballinakill to beat Borris

R/D will beat Abbeyleix but not by much

Camross to beat Ballacolla by 6 plus

I was a whisker away from my predictions being right

[Unlaoised]

Going to go with the Harps tonight!

[Unlaoised]

Portlaoise a Tad fortunate to win last night by two points I thought the Harps were the better team overall...

Harps had to work a lot harder to get frees I thought whereas some of Portlaoise's were of the soft variet in saying that when Portlaoise ran at them they cause them all sorts of problems in the latter stages.

The Harps missed a Peno with a few minutes to go which would have probably won the game for them.

[redsetanta]

Great win for Ballinakill tonight. Cha must be doing his thing!

[BallyroanAbbey]

Im afraid going by tonight the bottling gene in abbeyleix is spread beyond their senior team, how they drew that game ill never know they were much the better team

[Laoiseabu]

Where does the Gaels come from ? was Liam Delaney playin or is he still injured

[Ballyroan Abbey]

Think they have a few from ballypickas on it which is suprising considering delaney (who i felt was excellent tonight) and a few others were poached off them by abbeyleix. I was probably a bit harsh earlier on but it really was a game that should of been won by by 10-15 points especially after cranny got the goal. All thinggs going well we'll finish the job in the replay

[Home Boys Home]

Where does the Gaels come from ? was Liam Delaney playin or is he still injured

It is Abbeyleix with 3 players from Ballypickas. Liam Delaney was playing.

[Home Boys Home]

Think they have a few from ballypickas on it which is suprising considering delaney (who i felt was excellent tonight) and a few others were poached off them by abbeyleix. I was probably a bit harsh earlier on but it really was a game that should of been won by by 10-15 points especially after cranny got the goal. All thinggs going well we'll finish the job in the replay

You are right, you were harsh earlier, they are young lads doing their best.

"Delaney and a few others were poached off them by Abbeyleix" is a pretty one-eyed and exaggerated view at best.