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For me the inter county scene is pretty much dead and buried for teams outside the top 8 under the current structure.

No excitement, no buzz anymore and we have players expected to devote their lives to this and all they get is failure and endless abuse. Anyone that commits fully to the regime and represents Laois is a credit to the county.

But the answer to the problem is there in front of us.

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10 teams in each grade or thereabouts, each county can have one team only.

But will our pride allow it........doubt it.

Its getting to that point alright, but the Tommy Murphy cup was basically an intermediate championship but counties did not want it. They all at least want some kind of crack at Sam no matter how unrealistic. There really needs to be some kind of seeding introduced, run league and provisional championships off separately for example and work out the seedings based on results of these (so both competitions are not dead rubber, there is seeding to play for as well as silverware). Bottom half counties go into a knockout comp say 'Tommy Murphy' cup of some such name, top half play for Sam but winners of Tommy get added before qf stage. That way technically everyone has a crack at Sam. Might be nightmare fixture wise but you get the overall gist. Would have lots of good games and all games have something on the line.

Each county wants to have a crack at  Sam ..... that the part I don't get and I agree with you that's what  they want in football not so in hurling. if you relate that to county championship junior clubs don't expect or demand a crack at the senior championship. I'd say junior clubs are quite happy to play and compete at or near their own level.
Lets be honest the football league starting this w/e is a much more interesting competition because we are playing at our own level.

Is it eleven years since we won 2 games in the championship  ?? and that's when we had a good team.

A crack at Sam !!!  for the birds.

For me the inter county scene is pretty much dead and buried for teams outside the top 8 under the current structure.

No excitement, no buzz anymore and we have players expected to devote their lives to this and all they get is failure and endless abuse. Anyone that commits fully to the regime and represents Laois is a credit to the county.

But the answer to the problem is there in front of us.

Senior
Intermediate
Junior

10 teams in each grade or thereabouts, each county can have one team only.

But will our pride allow it........doubt it.

I heard a lot of players have left the Limerick panel ( not wanting to make the commitment 4 or 5 night plus GYM ) will probably have a lot of young players our.

You can say what you like about bulk but Ross never regained the speed he had before he bulked up.

He was nippy, skilful but light and when he put on the strength he slowed down considerably.

Well I know next to nothing about S&C  but I think its got to do with body shape if you like and the 2 examples I like are Clancy and Ross  before and after McNulty.
I think all will agree that before they were being thrown around the place by most teams,  Clancy never bulked up but BJ was he strong and I remember Ross hitting that Meath corner back a clatter in Tullamore and their supporters whinging about it for a week after 
Were they better players after ..... absolutely  IMO.

It would be helpful to know what the full panel is after the cut.
I'm a bit supersized that Ross might be a starter at this point.

The priority in my view would be to introduce 10 replacement players over the next two years, winning div 4 with and old team and then struggling to remain in div 3 wouldn't represent progress. Now if we were to win it with say 7 or 8 new players now that would be something. 

Okay okay I want someone to answer this ? Donie Kingston plays for Dublin , he is focused , committed,motivated and wants to win. He is conditioned to the highest level and so are his teammates .Is he the best full foward in the country now?? I know he is .

If he was "focused, committed, motivated, wants to win, highly conditioned and playing with highly conditioned team mates", I doubt Laois would be in Division 4 now. That's where we are and it was last year's team with Donie that got us there (admittedly with some indisciplined team mates). Donie was a leader in a losing team.

This is not to denigrate his efforts. Last season must surely be hurting. But if you're a leader, you come back and make sure that the mistakes of last year are not repeated. He shares some responsibility for last year's debacle (with all of the other players and management). I would like to see him take the opportunity of this year's campaign to show what he's really capable of (and to lead Laois football into some form of respectability).

Good answer to an unanswerable

Danny o Reilly

Luttrel was brought on later actually didn't get much of the ball

Ye saw DoR a few years ago thought he had potential, wingback maybe.

Mercenary or Angel Sent From Heaven
Laois had some notions giving him the sack
3 Leinster Finals, won one for the first time in 50 odd years

Was hard hearing him say that he thought they were good enough to win the big one.
What might have been eh?
Parkinson was on Twitter saying there was more to it than just the players commitment. Who knows.

He wasn't sacked his term was up... big difference. They players knew  themselves his methods weren't working as they were being thrown around the place like rag dolls by Armagh and Tyrone, examples Clancy and Ross were 2 totally different boys after a bit of s+c during McNulty's  tenure.
One other point, does anyone remember  "the Heath showdown" anyway much publicised meeting with Micko and the Laois players after a week of I'm  not getting the commitment and I don't think I can continue blah blah blah.Television cameras the nine o clock news, showdown withe the players and in the end it all gets sorted. The exact week Dublin CB were considering Micko for job. Nice exit strategy.
Having said all above it was a brilliant few years in Laois while he was there and I don't believe anyone else would have got as much out of the team, the big one ? IMO  no chance.

No no don't tell us yet ...November is a horrible month keep it going till December

A couple of posters here have questioned the quality of Portlaoise lads, but I think that's missing the point. Both Moorefield and Portlaoise showed on Sunday that the system and team work are more important than the individual. Having watched Laois closely over the last few years, there hasn't been a system. A couple of our experienced midfielders have been known to hoof the ball to Donie and stand with hands on hips. That simply won't do in modern football. As Nameless pointed out, the emphasis now is on speed and conditioning. I would add good support play into that mix. Portlaoise players are good enough. Anyone who commits, trains and buys into a system should be considered. Anyone who doesn't should be discarded.

Excellent post. It's easy to denigrate the quality of the players but we have really been without any kind of discernible system of play since McNulty (and that system had some serious flaws too). In addition to all the physical elements of "the system" mentioned above, there is a winning mindset that has to be developed which, I'm afraid, seems very absent from some of our better players.

I'd agree plenty of players good enough on Sunday. A lot of harsh comment re the quality of players  on Dillon in particular.
Some players don't have 70 minutes in them and need to be replaced earlier( no matter who they are) especially  with this running game one or two tired players and it all breaks down.

They didn't have the fitness level required for their running game, their support play which was excellent in the first half was gone half way through the second half resulting in them losing possession 3 or 4 times towards the end.

Ref was poor, a box in the face is a yellow at least, Dillon gets a yellow for pulling down a player off the ball when it should have being a black.

I might be way off but i don't think the lads were unfit. They were training since November. The issue was the lack of pace in the team which makes it crazy that Dillon wasn't starting. Apart from Farrell and Damien O'Connor where was the pace? We need to inject some youth and pace into the team.

Any suggestions

Yeah, i know there are a few lads that don't have 3 or 4 years left - like Padraig or Brendan or Ross.

My point is that we still have a large chunk of lads who are still in their prime or late prime. I consider 23 - 31 to be the prime years, and most of our lads are still within that age bracket, albeit most of them towards the latter stages. 3-4 years for a 28/29/30 year old is normal as most lads bow out around the 33/34 age mark. Having said that of course we could do with some fresh new talent making the transition.

They might play on but they are no where near the players they once were.
Who are the 5 new players ?
If it's the same panel as last year forget it, we won't beat Westmeath.

Yeah I agree with you there Ballyroan. There are about 5 new players from this years county championship that i think can make a good difference to our squad. Let's hope the old reliables commit, too, especially tried and trusted backs like Cahir Healy. We could really do with everyone on board. Those lads around the age of Healy, Timmons, JOL, Begley etc still have another 3-4 good years in them in my opinion. John Surgue is universally liked, from what I hear. No excuse for lads saying "ah sure he's from Town X, he'll be biased" and no excuse for lads from portlaoise either. If you want to play, you want to play, and that's it. A players career is short enough. Why not challenge yourself at the top level while you're able to do it. Best of luck to all who commit to play for Laois in 2018, we as support will be with you all the way. If you give 100%, regardless of what happens, we'll be very satisfied. We're a proud GAA county and we can all do better than the last couple of years. Laois Abu

Tony I very much doubt it is there's 5 players out there that will make a difference.
I haven't seen any club football this year and I'm waiting to see the name of one player who will force him way on to this team, as a matter of fact I'm waiting for about 5 years for news of that outstanding new player.
There's 8 from last years panel who will be 32 or older next year there's no 3 or 4 years left in those boys in fact most of them were finished 2 years ago, let's be real here unless 7 or 8 very good players emerge out of nowhere further decline is inevitable.

OK!!