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Shanahoe/ballypickas is done for gales apparently

I have a problem with this. If this is true,
Ballypickas will play on their own in JHC, with Shanahoe in SHC A, with St Fintan's in U14 & U16, with Abbeyleix in Minor & U21.
This all getting too messy for my liking.

Think they are basically going all in with fintans and cutting ties with abbeyleix, in which case there is a link as shanahoe also play with fintans, and both are on the outskirts of abbeyleix, whereas ballinakill and slieve bloom there is no link/arguement, basically being done to benefit conroy playing senior and ballinakill needing another forward to win a championship

Kyle/knock was going on for a few years now, came close a few years ago apparently but they were going to hurl in laois because they reckoned they would make a bigger impact, wonder is a cross county amalgamation been done or even possible?

Shanahoe/ballypickas is done for gales apparently,timahoe deals in both codes shot down by committee, josephs/barrowhouse was rejected by josephs, they are the ones ive heard anyway, im assuming with the exception of ballinakill and slieve margy all other gales teams areremaining from last year

Yes Ballyroan abbey that's a fair point but my problem is when lads come down to the field hungover and not able to do a training session ,at the end of the season they then blame the manager for the teams lack of fitness and trophies and the manager then gets the chop

Regrade them to junior so, a club either has to reward the most committed players or the most talented because its not usually the same thing

Heard leigh bergin was looking to go to ballacolla and kevin bergin from clonad to colt (which ironically because he lives in clonad he is in raheen parish which is colts area and not clonads), also 2 lads from colt coming to play football with us this year

 Maybe they should start looking at themselves for a change. Sure we will just blame the manager like ? A kick up the Arse is what's needed with a lot of lads . You only have a chance to train and play football when your young so why not cop on and make the most of it.
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Because lads want to have their own craic away from football too at the end of the day its only a game, a lot of lads would rather a social life than a few pieces of silver

Catchment area cant cover 2 parishes if there's one thing that the ranting of tom cahill established down through the years it was that

Well if you look  at Division 3a in football stradbally and portlaoise pulled out before it began, spink only played when the ballinakill lads wanted a break from the hurling and even then they only had a scrap team, port not much better, leaving barrowhouse and kilcavan (2 intermediate teams) with only proper matches against each other. And if you look at 5a in the hurling majority of walkovers were by teams who pulled out from the start. In general throughout all leagues there was less walkovers and more competitive matches in the hurling than the football

We are having to give up Junior C Football as lads are not interested in traipsing all over Laois on a Wednesday night.
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I know that thiz doesnt have much to do with gales teams but i feel that the way the county board restructured the leagues have been an absolute disaster really, and is damaging alot of club due to so many matches been forfeited,especially when you get past 1a and 1b. Why they couldnt just follow the hurling structure ill never know, there was 58 teams in the leagues last year, have 6 divisions of 8 teams with the 7th (junior c) division been split into two groups of 5 based on geography because as abu said lads playing junior c dont want be travelling to the far side of the county to play junior c, and have every team play each other once in proper competitive games (maybe allow division 1 teams keep home and away if they wish) because asking 2nd and 3rd teams to play 10/12 games is unrealistic. Its proven to be fairly succesful in yhe hurling so i think it could be in the football too

Surely the county board shouldnt allow a transfer of a barrowhouse player to josephs to happen, they literely just turned down the oppurtunity to have the player play for them

we have a lot of talent coming through but to convert them to senior footballers is the problem, there is to much of a gap between the development squads of 16 and then until they reach senior level, if we want to be more successful we need to continue coaching right through until they are 20 as some of the minor coaching is shocking, we also are very mentally weak, a lot of younger players seem to be injured all the time, are they really injured or are they just mentally weak?

Id rather a young mind himself than be broke up by the time they are in their 30s, just look at Tom Kelly and Joe Higgins in Joesphs, theres plenty of higher profile players from other counties too

Colt, Shanahoe, Clonad and part of Trumera are all in the same Parish. why they dont all join together is beyond me. Probably too much bad blood between them all. But they are struggling for numbers on their own, they should look into a amalgamation. it worked for Rathdowney Erill, Borriss Kilcotten, Clough Ballacolla and the Harps (Culahill and Durrow) who were a competitive senior team for years.

Ballypicass and Ballinakill you'd think could join too as some of them would play together for spink football plus geographically there are side by side, let timahooe come in with them too.

i would be in favour for gaels and or amalgamations as there is too many small clubs in laois where the population isnt high, it would have to make for a stronger standard.

All very good points, and you are right in hindsight regarding Kyle and trumera with no underage, Kyle young lads can play with camross,roscrea or b/k and in a couple of cases the players have choose to stay with those clubs altogether,e.g arien Delaney,Darren Gilmartin, Conor Quinlan is going this year and trumera have had a phenomenal run in the last 10-12 years with players representing county and winning their respective championships when stuck for numbers, clonad,trumera,colt would be good for all clubs involved but one would argue the"giving away identity" argument, does Chris Murray still hurl?

I dont actually see having small clubs as a problem as long as they have an outlet available to them to play at a higher level, quinlan and gilmartin are proof that there is talent at smaller clubs, unfortunately bar you play for a senior club these players are flat out ignored, would ben conroy have played for laois if he hadnt played senior? Highly unlikely. Even this year we saw how the gales link up between ballyfin and mountmellick showed how good donnacha harnett is and there  are more like him, MJ Lalor and Robbie Foyle spring to mind. Unfortunately any promising young hurler feels necessary to go play for a senior club to be recognised at county level, as for your question about chris murray yes he still plays

Colt and slieve bloom have numbers and a juvenile system so cant see how they can be compared with kyle and trumera which in fairness are tiny areas, especially trumera

That was the risk Bueller. Have Portlaoise transferred people in? My initial point that clubs in the Portlaoise area (Heath Park Clonad and Portlaoise) have rule in place now where transfer within area is automatically rejected.

A rule that could be adopted in every parish would stop alot of poaching if actually enforced

In fairness i think its far more likely for a colt/trumera and castletown/slieve bloom gales than portlaoise/clonad. From what i was told there are around 7 lads in timahoe who want to hurl with ballypickas (believe alot of the players are quite friendly with each other) and that ballypickas are quite receptive to this happening so it is basically coming down to the timahoe committee, don like i said in the first post alot of this could be bullshit, im just relaying what ive heard