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 The offaly championship with a similar club count and profile to ours seems to be flying.

I don't think the appetite is in laois for regional senior teams to be competitive.
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In Offaly the talk is to reduce it to 8 teams atm with regional teams making the last 2 spots, and have 8 at Premier intermediate too, now the fact that a lot of players off both their all Ireland finalist in hurling and football at u20 are from smaller clubs might be part of it, but that is the talk atm, condensing senior or increasing the standard and player pool, or both

For those hoping for a 10 team championship would this be a debate really if it was a Ballyfin or a Ballinakill even that had been relegated, the fact that it's Borris in Ossory/Kilcotton people seem to think they have a god given right to be senior, they got to a good few finals the last years granted but they have been in free fall since 2021, I actually reckon it would have been far worse for Laois hurling if The Harps had lost last night considering the amount players they are producing underage
B/K finished bottom of there group and conceded 28 points in a relegation final they deserve to be where they are.
As for a 10 team championship Laois are currently a McDonagh Cup team, we have 21 hurling clubs in this county currently, making half of them senior would be madness in my opinion, you'd only dilute the quality of the championship bringing extra clubs in
If you want 2 additional teams then if anything there should be a North and South regional team made of the non senior teams, and even at that I'd consider getting rid of 2 more to keep the 8 team championship, at least this way every player has access to senior hurling regardless of there club status, would also reduce the amount of lads leaving smaller clubs for bigger ones too
Danny Brennan and James Keyes two great examples, playing at lower levels but well well capable of playing county never mind senior club

Finally on Borris/Kilcotton, if rumours of what's been going on down there the last few years are true, then they are better off apart because forcing a marriage just doesn't work

Talk is that O'Carroll is moving to a club in Dublin next year so this is probably the opportunity to win an intermediate, if they got up senior it might entice him into staying

We'd have a few hurling Senior with Abbeyleix, have one with Ballypickas on our seniors and a few more scattered between Colt/Shanahoe and PRT

Eddie Kinsella Jesus

What's the alternatives?

Lar Wall if you could convince him to come from Meath
Billy O'Loughlin has managed Longford (and relegated Laois) was over the u20s in 19 that made Leinster final

Ideally you'd want a Laois man but options are very thin on the ground from within

Would find it hard to see Murphy being interested tbh, I know he had success with Portarlington but long term the player profile in Offaly seems more attractive as does the background/ county board set up, plus Offaly being his own county would be a reason to manage them in itself so if he was leaving them he'd hardly move to Laois straight away

Sugrue  is the obvious choice but to be honest I'd rather he was more over structures within the county, still I'd rather him involved in any way than not at all

Eddie Kinsella seems to be the name getting thrown around

Didn't see a thread for this so I said I'd get the ball rolling.

There was a bit of chat in the Laois Senior Hurlers 2023 thread - but far better for it to have its own thread.

Borris slipping out of the 'Big 4', big time.

Borris produced that run of minors from 09 to 13 or 14 which prompted the amalgamation in the first place, unfortunately since they came together at adult level they have the ball slip big time underage and it's now starting to catch up with them, they have grossly underachieved and that's why they are now drifting away from the group with Camross Rathdowney/Errill and Clough/Ballacolla

Change can happen very quickly and usually teams change every 10 years or so but generally in Laois there is always 3 or 4 above the rest. Castletown won a title in 06 I think and haven't been in a final since, Portlaoise were in 3 straight from 09 to 11, two years later they were relegated and been bopping up and down since
Looking at the next few years looking at it from underage you would imagine The Harps will break into the contenders group along with Abbeyleix because these are the two that have consistent success, at least one of them have been in minor finals since 2016 except for 2017, and they are the two front runners this year again
I can see Rathdowney dropping out for a time, although they seem to maximise their players ex John Purcell, Shane Dollard

From what I can see Laois basically left it to the clubs to sort out for a decade and only now are starting to do a bit, it's hard to know weather it's token gestures that will die off or if it's that Offaly who on top of being our neighbours and rivals are actually the closest thing to Laois in terms of clubs, playing numbers, split between hurling and football and they have cleaned themselves up big time, which in itself reflects badly on the Laois county board

Like us they had a 16 team senior football championship, they split it
Invested heavily in underage
Got in major sponsorship to fund these
Sorted out their schools to make them competitive and another player development pathway

The fact that they only scrambled a draw off us this year is proof they were way further down than we were, and that we still have room to drop if it isn't sorted ASAP

But they are also proof that the things being suggested are doable and doable quickly with the right people

Completely agree about the schools with exception of Knockbeg there seems to be little to no emphasis on schools football in Laois
We need to have the CBS in Portlaoise and Portarlington either competitive in the A or winning B competitions, Heywood should be consistently in the B too
Clonaslee and Mountmellic have probably too small a pick but again this is where a combined Laois schools team for schools outside the A  is needed to give lads an opportunity to play at the highest level

A lot of Laois GAA is currently centred around geography unfortunately

Well the regional teams would be made of more than just hurlers, you would be getting the best from intermediate and junior teams playing too, the whole idea would be you have everyone with an opportunity at playing senior, less number of players while improving the quality

Take someone like James Baldwin from Barrowhouse, probably not a county player but I'd argue he would be a very good senior club player, Simular with

You'd also have the add on of improving your intermediate and junior championships by reducing the senior
There are currently 16 clubs at senior
There are 13 clubs between intermediate and junior A clubs with their first teams
You shouldn't have a higher percentage chance of being a senior club than of not being one
If clubs want to remain senior it will force them to improve their underage systems, and put them under more pressure to ensure that the conveyer belt stays producing players

Looking at the Setanta programme on Laois Today, it's something along these signs that Laois are going to have to be put in, even for the football I'd imagine that could be regionalised the first few years between North Mid and South Laois
The days of there being mass areas of no football and hurling can't be let continue there has be a platform for lads from these areas to play at a higher level

You see it with lads Like Rafter in Rathdowney, Tyrell and young Byrne in Camross, Mullaney in Castletown, the Comerfords in The Harps, that there are genuinely good footballers in hurling areas, are they county standard, I don't know probably not but could they play senior club, yes

On the club scene for immediate improvement splitting senior into 8 or 12 clubs and having 4 regional teams with them would reduce the amount of players playing senior while also allowing for a higher standard of player, and giving proper exposure to lads from bad current senior clubs, junior clubs and lads from hurling clubs

I also feel we got to 2 u20 finals in 19 and 20, where are these lads, how many went onto play senior?
Very few I'd say, like that 19 team had a 6"7 two footed full forward with decent pace, who became so uninterested in football that he now occasionally plays junior C football and took up hurling, how was that let happen
Jack Owens, very athletic wing forward loads of promise a lad who you could easily turn into prototype county wing back/forward, never pushed on, why?

I even see it with Diarmuid Whelan I think he played 5-10 minutes of senior championship against Westmeath in 21, a lad that seemed a sure fire senior

Laois have a decade of work to get right underage which a lot of people have pointed out, but there are a lot of immediate things that can be changed to bring quick improvements

Those lads I mentioned above maybe they're chance to be brought to a county level has passed now, but my point is how we're so those lads and more like them let slip away

I have very little knowledge of the in's and out's of county board business or who may or may not be the type(s) of individuals who would drive things on.

When our young minor hurlers starting competing well in the Leinster championship about 10 years ago or so we had Zoom involved with Setanta and Cheddar managing the minor team.

I would happily have both men involved in the running of hurling in the county from the youngest age.

Pay them for their time and give them a reasonably free hand in appointing coaches they want etc with a view to producing competitive underage hurling teams over the next few years with a goal of winning a minor leinster championship. . Both men have more than enough credit in the bank to get others involved. How many lads, former team mates and ex county players would turn down a few hours a week if asked by Critchley or Cheddar.

Would they want it though? Have they ever been asked?

I hear Critchley Cheddar and Rigney mentioned a lot as people who could help Laois hurling, which in theory I agree sounds great, however for the last 10 years they have stood by and watched Portlaoise do in Laois hurling what Offaly did at Intercounty level and fall asunder, so while it would be great to have them involved I certainly wouldn't be handing them over the keys to the county

Noticed young Barry Fitz of Portlaoise is now plying his trade with Stradbally, rare enough for lads to move between senior clubs

Any word on movers for the upcoming season, usually a few getting lined up around christmas

Mark Cahill, Aaron Caroll, Aaron McEvoy, Lawson Obular all from Abbeylace..
Doyle from Ballyroan.
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Abbeyleix would be probably a decent intermediate team by themselves
Ballyroan would be be basically where they were for the first 10 years of the amalgamation hoping between Senior and Intermediate

The lads that came through last year were probably the last of a good few successful underage teams, we would still get lads again but you won't have 7 or 8 Senior footballers off 1 team like that crop

Port in a way is a great draw for us because we are plenty talented enough, its games like this that have to be won or at least competitive in if a breakthrough is ever going to happen

I'd be confident that breakthrough will come if not this year in the next couple as there is a lot of momentum behind us since covid