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Clonaslee should have won last night . Will be kicking themselves today . Overall the better team and missed a host of opportunities

Clonaslee were the better team tonight IMHO.

There's no doubt we used our get out of jail card last night alright but I think we possibly deserved to edge it. We weren't too bad at missing chances ourselves - we really could or should have had two more goals! Given we were down one through suspension and lost two of the starting team in the warm up, we'll take the result and move on.
But, yeah, no doubt, Clonaslee were excellent. A credit to Conor Gorman and whoever else is behind it. They've some grand young players and play plenty of decent football. Like ourselves, tons of mistakes too.

The problem for Portarlington will be in 3 years time when that crop of under 15s has to move into adult hurling. They can't all be expected to make up an adult team at the age of 18 and there probably aren't many other 20 something hurlers in the area.
I can't offer a solution either other than what happened with Slieve Margy and the best 4 or 5 lads moved to senior teams.

Given the choice, I'd rather see proper arrangements in place that allow all players in Junior or Intermediate to play with a Senior club.

Bingo. Spot on. Yet when Annanough, Courtwood and Park Ratheniska tried to do that a number of years ago, most of the senior clubs blocked it and the executive effectively didn't support it by abstaining. There's good young footballers in Spink, Barrowhouse, Kilcavan to name just three clubs. It's bordering on criminal that they don't have access to playing in the senior football championship. No more than ourselves when we were down intermediate and junior.

Portlaoise team looks fairly strong again, not sure what they were at the previous season. I can only see Portarlington having the panel to put it up to them in the 2021 championship.

They still have to add David Seale, Ciaran McEvoy, David Holland and possibly Ronan McEvoy to last night's team.

Credit where its due. The fixtures and results now appear at the top i.e. the most recent ones appear first.

From the last two under 20 teams that made it to leinster finals you could argue that the teams were made up of a collective of good footballers as opposed to a team that was driven by 2/3 star or standout footballers. Ultimately, it is only the 'star' footballers from the underage grade that will realistically step up to the senior team and add to things at that level. Those Laois U20 sides of last two years full of fine players, however if we are expecting 7/8 of them to step up to senior in the next 12/24 months and make Laois a competitive division 2 team again I cannot see that happening.

I hear people giving out about Quirke not blooding more youth and annoyed regarding his reliance on the old guard. Unfortunately, I don't see those young footballers in the county who are really challenging or should be in the team ahead of the likes of Timmons, O'Loughlin, Begley, Kingston or Lillis.

I think that's a fair enough argument and it's also true that Quirke didn't have any sort of a preseason or O'Byrne Cup to look at a few potential new players meaning that he basically went with the same squad for two years in a row (with Donie coming back in for this year). He was under pressure from day one to try to keep us in Division Two.

Lacey, O'Flynn, Barry and Byron are in the squad at the moment. That's four players. I thought Diarmuid Whelan was a standout forward in 2019 but is he possibly injured? And I know one game isn't a great sample size but when we played Rosenallis in last year's championship, I though Eoin Dunne was excellent, way ahead of John O'Loughlin (who I'm not saying played badly either).

No matter who is charge of the team next year, I'd be hoping to see a decent effort at unearthing a few potential senior panel players over the coming six or seven months. As Laois Rising says there are possibly a lot of lads of the same standard out there but it's up to a decent manager to identify the ones he thinks he could make something of.

Don't see it.

Is it straight knockout this year or are there qualifiers. Better off if there are no qualifiers. Can't see them as being of any benefit to us.

Straight knockout.

I disagree jobs last game cork kicked us up and down the field,,

That was a Round 4 qualifier - Sugrue brought us from Division 4 to Division 2, a Leinster final and two Round 4 qualifiers. I think losing him was a blow we haven't recovered from yet.

Just wondering what clubs make up Cromogue.
Colt-Shanahoe and who else?

Thanks

I wouldn't be 100% but I think it was Trumera. They aren't registered for 2021 that I can see.

Laois play Westmeath on 4th July. Win that and there's a semi final on 18th July. And the Leinster final is on 1st August.
The two 2020 SFC semi finals really depend on how Laois get on. Very tough on the four clubs involved.

I'm reluctant to criticise anyone involved in the website of in the PR side of things in general. It's a huge voluntary task.
Some of the stuff is very good such as the Laois GAA TV service and the social media channels but the website really seems to be neglected. I've lost count of how many relaunches or reboots it has had now over the years but it always seems to lag behind other counties. A pity.

I'm not sure I'm totally happy with this narrative that yesterday's performance is some sort of improvement on the Clare game.
We were at home to a Cork team that Kildare beat well last week and lost by 8 points! There might have been a few improved individual performances but in general, I thought it was equally as poor as the performance in Ennis. 

Ah come on Hesh. We all know that the criteria here is to sit politely, nod in the appropriate places and take your free car parking and entry. Do Nothing Delegates and sorry to use a Trumpism. For all the criticism I hear from our pious local media, I honestly feel more enlightened reading this forum and other social media platforms. I can't stand being patronised and that's all I'm hearing from those who have vested interest. I'll say it again. Fair f**king play Eddie Brennan. You confirmed what I suspected for a very long time

All I'm saying is 7 or 8 of the county board were not on it three years ago. That's a fact.
And I've no vested interest.

Best of luck to the lads tomorrow. I'm sure they have their own targets to hit and I hope they do that. A win just isn't realistic but it'd be great to see a performance with plenty of character.

I'm not even going to attempt to get involved in this argument but I would point out that the perception that county board is some form of closed shop isn't exactly accurate. Of the 14 or 15 members of the current executive, one is a permanent member and paid employee (the secretary) and there are 7 or 8 on it who weren't three years ago.
I've no "skin in the game" either. Feck it, they blocked me on twitter a few weeks ago! But just pointing that out.