Messages

Great News,

tony I am going to pick you up on your last musings on this thread, and gather up a few overall thoughts.

firstly tony, you now declare Laois football a poisoned chalice, during the entire league, you offered the excuse of "missing players" for poor performances.....you have been an apologist from day 1 for this management.

I will tell you my views on the most recent(8-10 years of laois managements).
Justin McNulty I met 2 weeks ago....I was a big fan of him as a manager....style marks would have been low, but he kept us organised and competitive(possibly even punching above our weight).....he told me he is giving total commitment to his job at Stormont and has minimal involvement in GAA management now.........if he did leave politics and return to GAA, there would be a queue to offer him an intercounty role.

Liam kearns is a canny operator: a decent manager, not top class.....he was part of the Roscommon set up under John Evans and now with Tipp.....canny because he only moves to counties with the talent already at his disposal....you will not see him at a Carlow for instance.

O Flaherty, at best a selector, a 5 star spoofer as a manager.
Mick Lillis a good man at club management and was fighting a losing battle from day 1 at the helm of the seniors as most saw him as a sticking plaster arrangement.

Now for your view Tony, that Creedon was well respected.......if he was so well respected why was he rejected out of hand for his native Cork job when that position was vacant last summer?

I posted on the football league thread at half time in the opening league game against Louth....I said then what I was watching was a disaster and my prediction of relegation unfortunately materialised.

A management team can be unlucky with missing players....BUT......
(1)  a proper management will have a definite game plan and in the modern game such plans if adhered to can dilute the effect of missing players...............from day 1 against Louth this Laois team has had no plan whatsoever.

(2)  during the league campaign this squad has lacked fitness compared to other sides..........one must then question the fitness coach

(3) the lack of fitness and lack of gameplan/style, items 1 and 2 have been cruelly exposed in Division 3.....yes 3....doubtful if any of the 7 other teams in the division will grace an all Ireland quarter final in 2017...........if you are found out in division 3, imagine how bad things would have been against the quality sides.

(4) little or no discipline. 

the only people I hear defending this management are those that appointed them and their close friends......if a senior club side in laois brought an outside coach in with these results in a club league campaign, said coach would be sacked before the championship and someone else brought in to try and give the set up a shot in the arm and at least some level of renewed optimism.


How many of the 16 senior clubs sides in laois would offer Creedon a job judged on his results to date with this county?



Look the big picture was this executive in Laois have been out of their depth for some time....on the credit side, they have developed the training facility.....but on the pitch, they have overseen the plummeting in standards of laois inter county football from underage to senior, and little of late has happened to address that trend. 

The executive appointed and stood by a dud like O Flaterty for 2 years, then appointed Lillis in a panic.  To appease the masses last Autumn Creedon and his "top class backroom team" were appointed in a publicity blitz as a measure to quell the anger that was bubbling with Laois football supporters.
Apart from Tipperary underage, Creedon was in essence an unproven quantity, and that aspect meant he deserved time to prove himself as well as buying time for the executive. In a results and performance business, we now know, that Mick Lillis was every bit as good as Creedon and co., and once again the executive failed.

A speedy exit from the championship is desired, and what is required is a special conference of all those concerned about Laois football, and a plan for intercounty from Under 14 to Senior needs to be detailed, not a piecemeal job covering cracks.

The above said, we may beat Longford, but we will fail the moment we encounter a half decent team this summer.

Very well put.

It's not a witch hunt against Creedon, and there is no vested interest (from me anyways, and I'd suspect not from this poster).
There is only so much apologising and excuse making that people can bear.
Intercounty managers are renowned for having "mouthpieces" in the media, particularly outsiders in middle tier counties. Whatever happens now the excuses have been well established- "The County Board just didn't back Creedon. It wasn't his fault,and sure anyways those players can't be managed!"

Thats telling you wholeheartedly agree with original poster, we won't beat Longford by the way.

Don't know if anyone has been drinking or not drinking this weekend.  However I think that it is an honor to play for your county that a few not all in this county take for granted.  I personally think that some players with Laois are happy to wear the county jersey but are not all that bothered about the commitment to that jersey.  Also the same people on here who are defending Creedon will now here nothing against any player on the Laois panel.  Well there is a personal responsibility on players to behave and act in a way that befits there standing within our communities.  These chaps are wrongly or rightly looked up to by young people throughout the county.

Yeah because if we slip further down the ranks, like we've been doing clearly at all levels from Minor to Senior for the past 10 years, it's all the new senior management teams fault, even though they've just been there for months.

That makes loads of sense. You've cracked it Keyser.

I thought you were gone till Championship

It was a B Laois team who played Sligo so can only imagine

We have the players to do this. With O'Connor, Attride (when fit), Begley, O'Loughlin, O'Carroll, Donagher, McMahon, Meaney, Strong etc we have the mixture of power and pace to cause teams trouble. We are also struggling with quality backs so an organised defensive system is an obvious solution. If we can get everyone fit and focused we could even do well in this years championship.

Welcome (back) nameless. I agree with almost everything you say except the pace part. We have power for sure but too many players that get burned too easily. O'Connor, Attride and Donagher have plenty of pace but after that, we are a pretty slow team. An organized defence also requires pace to get lads tracking back and disrupting runs. We let players run through us because we simply can't catch them. I too was a big McNulty fan. He never got the attacking system working but always said that you had to build a cultural foundation of defensive structure before evolving to that.

First post here so go easy on me. I used to post on the old Laoistalk forum. Recognise some old names here and I recognise some who have changed their usernames.

I think a lot of my posts on the old forum were defending Justin McNulty and also saying what a mistake it was to get rid of him. I think everyone accepts at this stage that it was a huge blunder and the results before and after his reign proves this. We had a team that was fit, strong, organised and most of all competitive. It wasn't all perfect but it was a lot better than what we have now.

He was ran out of the county because we in Laois were too good for that 'Northern style' football, we have natural, classy footballers, let's go out and attack teams! Well how did that go for us? We're now in division 4 instead of competing in division 1 or the higher part of division 2 and we've been knocked out by Clare, Antrim and Tipperary instead of running the reigning All Ireland champions Dublin and Donegal to a few points.

It's been a complete disaster of a move and let's not fool ourselves into thinking we had better players then. A lot of the players were the same and we didn't even have Donie when we were beating Monaghan and Meath in 2012. What would be the score against those teams now?

We have also seen in the last few years that everyone has accepted that you must organise yourselves defensively to compete, everyone! Dublin thought they could outscore teams at will and Donegal taught them a lesson, Kerry have had 'the blanket defense' for a good few years now. It's time we in Laois copped ourselves on.

Despite the myth that it's not in Laois players psyche to play defensive football, it clearly is the best method for us to compete. Defending in numbers and counter attacking at pace with Donie and another player playing inside is what we're best suited too. Our best performances in the past few years have all been when using this system.

We have the players to do this. With O'Connor, Attride (when fit), Begley, O'Loughlin, O'Carroll, Donagher, McMahon, Meaney, Strong etc we have the mixture of power and pace to cause teams trouble. We are also struggling with quality backs so an organised defensive system is an obvious solution. If we can get everyone fit and focused we could even do well in this years championship.

Creedon hasn't made a good start but we should give him the championship to make a judgement. It's obvious to all that we don't have many players coming through but that's a separate issue to the current senior team. The development of players has to be done at a young age and we need serious change to how we go about this but the manager of the senior team has to work with what he has and Creedon has to do better than he has up to this.

There have been a lot of injuries though, get them right for the championship and implement the right system and I think we'll have a similar campaign to what Tony thinks above.

Sense at last, don't know if you wanted to be associated with me but I think these two are on point.  Pace is key but you don't have to be overly skilful to be good defensively just organised,fit, hardworking and willing. 

A lot of people go on about the effect of mass media on the vote for todays players,  I would also like to mention that sometimes the memories play tricks when this is not available.  For past players we tend to focus on their great games and do very little examination of their bad ones.  It would be like judging Bernard Brogan's whole career on his footballer of the year season.  It truly is an unfair comparison on how you can judge 24/7 analysis of now, against euphoric recall.

But just for arguments sake can you name a club you admire outside of Dublin in Leinster to get a feel for how bad the players are in Laois.

I don't think we have particularly bad players I just think the overall strategy behind football development and preparation (if we have one) is dreadful.

I am open to any young Laois Man getting the job not particularly tied to anyone.   

Creedon is been paid which has sucked money from everywhere else as well as this to add insult to injury he has probably lost us quite abit in revenue as nobody is going to bothered going to Laois Matches except the die hards.

I haven't a clue. Your question is designed to put Killeen in a good light. I don't rate Killeen. I don't rate Stradbally and for what it's worth, I think Portlaoise dropped the ball in a big way by not winning 10 in a row in a piss poor county. There is little if no talent coming out of Laois at the moment. We can't tackle, we can't defend and we don't like hard work. In short, we are wasting our time. You and your buddy blame Creedon for all this, which to me is a joke. Do you know why Portlaoise players swerve the county set up? Can you tell me who is meant to replace them? And should we place the same expectations on players even though we know they are inferior from the get go? Look closer to home if you want to know why Laois is REALLY failing as a county.

Can you tell me a club team in Leinster you do rate outside of Dublin so we can get a comparison.

Rooney got lucky last year, however it would be wrong to say he was looking for big money.  I think it was the cost of running the team over shot and he was not prepared to work at nearly half the budget.  Presume the money was diverted to Senior Management.

High Fielder be fair.
Michael Leigh (prob get on most teams in the county)
Donie Brennan(better that what we have)
Jason Enright (decent enough)
O Sheas Decent at club level
Shane Julian decent at club level
Paul Kingston (County Player)

BallyroanAbbey
McMahon, Conroy and Tierney & alot of chaps U19

I thought we did ok

I do think the players we have are talented enough to be knocking around Div 2,  Laois Football is no longer at a crossroads it's actually quite abit down the road to a desperate state.  At the core of this is the County Board & The Clubs.  Like it or lump we are not professional in our business (it's not easy when you are depending on volunteers).  I am with you on we cannot afford a huge Hollywood type manager but we could of went down the road of creating one.  We need inspiration and what's going on is a a never ending circle of downward performance.   We don't have a strategy or hope to take us out of this we are just waiting for it to happen.  Unfortunately as I get older this just does not happen you have to make it happen.  My thoughts on getting one of our own Club Managers to take the team is A) They are cheaper B) They know the task they face & C) One of them may just be the man.  This in turn would "hopefully pick up performances" leading to improvements off the pitch.  Maybe it's a fairy tale but I gasp in horror with the hurlers celebrating beating Kerry (should be a matter of fact) and the footballers heading for likewise scenario's.  I happened upon this article from 2009 this morning it was interesting.

ends
   
What happened the promising Laois minors?

Quote:
Laois kids' futures all in the past

They never built on their massive underage success and now there are too many egos and not enough honest effort to haul them to the top
Ewan MacKenna

Whitewash: Laois's 15-point defeat against Kildare in the Leinster SFC semi-final was one in a series of heavy losses they have suffered this year Back in 2005, as Laois made their way to Croke Park for an All Ireland quarter-final against Armagh, the first enemy outpost they reached was Athy. There was no hiding the fact either. The south Kildare town was draped with election-style posters, each one reading "Ulster Says No To The Queen's County". They were the work of one local man who'd spent dawn on a rickety stepladder but they encapsulated the sentiments of many in Kildare. There was a jealousy and bitterness that came from not just how well their rivals are doing, but how successful they could be.

Just four years on and Laois should be in a stronger position still, yet all that's left is the wreckage from last Saturday's Leinster semi-final against Kildare and there is very little to salvage from that. As good as their one provincial title and handful of years challenging as a top-eight team were, this is an underage superpower now acting like an irritating rogue state. Since 1996 they have won three All Ireland minor titles. That's more than Dublin, Galway, Mayo, Cork, Kerry and Armagh combined and only Tyrone have achieved more. They've won six Leinster minor titles in that same period too and have won three provincial under-21 titles since 1998.

Yet 40 minutes into last Saturday's clash with Kildare, Laois fans were deserting O'Connor Park and with all that has gone on, the side are in danger of being known as the Queens' County.

It's not a new phenomenon either. In fact it's the fourth time Laois have been embarrassed this year. Bernard Flynn may have talked about the ferocity of a training session he witnessed in the build-up to the game but that masked a side packed with too many egos and that had already been blitzed by Kildare, Monaghan and Cork in the league by an average of 12 points.

The problem is rooted in the past and it's developed into a culture of arrogance that's gone on too long to change. Mick O'Dwyer recently said of the side in this confession box, "He [Fergal Byron] was speaking from his heart because he gave me a wonderful commitment while I was there. Others couldn't say that. There was marvellous material in Laois but they were never as willing to give the same commitment as I got in Kildare. They didn't have the commitment or the same drive." But others there during O'Dwyer's four-year stint put that down as an understatement.

"Micko didn't care after a while because there was nothing he could do about what was going on," says a source familiar with what went on at the time. "But in Kildare guys would run up mountains for that man just because he said so. In Laois they needed explanations. Now that wasn't all of them but there were boys there who would fake injury during laps just to get out of them. All the talent in the world and most of it wasted in that place."

During O'Dwyer's final year, the most successful manager of them all was questioned by a side with just a single provincial title to their name. They ridiculed his methods, demanded change and modernisation and got the beating of a lifetime against Dublin. They didn't learn from that either though because O'Dwyer was far from the only manager to suffer at their hands. When Liam Kearns came to the county in 2007, it was to move forward a career that had seen him take Limerick to the brink of a Munster title. But there was a stage when he couldn't even find a player able to captain Laois. Ross Munnelly was said to be too selfish on the ball, Joe Higgins and Tom Kelly didn't show up for the league and after that there was a void when it came to finding a leader.

And Kearns faced far more startling problems than finding a recipient for an armband. Two players in the side had tried to move towards professionalism, refusing to play for Laois until they were sponsored to do so. What had once been ripe and vibrant was rotten to the core. A member of the Laois set-up at the time who wishes to remain nameless takes it further.

"They were put on a pedestal in Laois after winning those minor titles. If you go in to a pub there are pictures on the wall, there's someone there to buy them a pint and remind them of when they won underage All Irelands. You get that respect for winning senior titles in other counties. And they are making the same mistakes. Before it was Beano and Munnelly, now it's Donie Kingston and Tierney who are elevated too high. Some young guys go into the dressing room and think they rule it. The older guys never put them in their place. No leadership. It's gone too far in Laois and there's no going back. Mentally it's frightening just how weak they are."

Even current manager Seán Dempsey has experienced it and he's only in his first year. A former under-21 manager who dropped Donie Brennan before a 2006 All Ireland semi-final, he was forced to do it again this season officially for alcohol-related breaches of discipline but unofficially for a lack of effort in training. Yet within days, Brennan's club manager Nicky McGrath wrote to a local paper. "If this is correct then I would suggest that at least 50 per cent of the panel should have been dropped," he said.

It's not a coincidence that the only times Laois managed to act as a normal group of footballers were in '03 and '05, the year they captured Leinster and the year they peaked. Since then things have been out of control.

Late last year the players were all given gym membership, as was the case in Kildare, but last Saturday it was clear which group had been pushing themselves to the limit eight months ago. On top of that, three nights training each week doesn't cover for three nights socialising in the same week and while such accusations are aimed at limited numbers on the panel, last Saturday also showed that you can't cover for a colleague at the highest level.

In truth Dempsey neither commanded nor demanded respect from this side but if they weren't willing to respect O'Dwyer, then who will they respect? And when Dempsey realises he'd be better off doing pretty much anything else, who will want to take over such a group? After all, you can't force heart and dedication on a team and it appears they aren't going to force it upon themselves.

Not until Friday did the panel get back into training after their mauling six days previous. In the intervening period many had seen their pictures on the walls and glimpsed back at better days. They might have realised then that their future is buried deeply in the past.

I think you will find quite a few County Teams had trouble with him too.

Unbelievable, from the very beginning I said this management choice was uninspired it turned out even worse.  At the beginning I was called an idiot and stupid.  So we are back full circle again I am an idiot and stupid, however I will say it now our players and clubs are no worse than 24 other counties.   We continually knock our own, be it managers or players.   We bring in clowns, pay them and then are shocked when it goes wrong.  Peter Creedon will have no success in Laois because he is a moderate, uninspired choice who has little knowledge of Laois football.   This county is a political minefield I said months ago that Creedon would get us relegated and even after relegation things will get worse.  This county is afraid of doing the right thing.  If you think knocking McMahon is the thing to do go right ahead,  I never said he had a divine right to be on the county team.   We would gladly have him back in Ballyroan where he is appreciated.   

I don't think we are Div 1 team, but we certainly have the players to be mid table Div 2.  This is the sort of bollox talk of crap management in any business, or team.   I am not saying we would beat Kerry but we certainly have the players to beat Offaly, Antrim or Sligo.  It's childish that we pointed out the manager was a joke even before he started, but it is not childish to in the face of bare faced logic stand behind this farce.