After dwelling on laois performances since we exited all competitions in 2017 I have come to the following conclusions;
The Senior hurlers...
I think it was a reasonably good year overall. Maintaining division 1B status is crucial, topping the table in the round robin, beating Carlow in the qualifiers are good achievements for this team. Who knows if we hadn't so many injuries how close we would have got to Dublin.
Going forward as has already been said its crucial that Cahir Healy and Matthew Whelan stay on for another couple of years. We really need to strengthen the panel next year to and hopefully the likes of Joe Campion, Colm Stapleton, PJ Scully, Gearoid Burke and Eoin Reilly rejoin the panel. There are other guys like Robbie Phelan, Joe Geaney, Padraig Delaney and Ciaran Comerford to name a few that should be encouraged to commit to the panel.
I reckon we are the tenth best team in Ireland at the moment, with Offaly in disarray coming11th. Offaly are likely to lose some of their best players over the next year or two as Shane Dooley, Joe Bergin and captain Sean Ryan at the end of their county careers.
The problem for laois is that their is too big a gap between us and the team at number 9 which is probably Dublin. There has been a lot of talk about bridging the gap over the past few years but no action actually doing something about it.
While the are some encouraging signs coming from some underage teams there are not enough encouraging signs. The minors surprised a lot of people this year and really can be proud of their efforts, running Dublin to 3 points was fair going and this is where we need to get to with all our underage teams. We need to be at least competitive and then results will follow here and there. The under 14s have shown promise but against who? Its only in the Tony forrestal competitions that you really see where these lads are at.
So what can be done??
We can and should constantly be begging croke park for support and when they don't give it go to national media to complain about them and show them up, for example, the huge quantities of money being pumped into development in Dublin where financially they are already mega rich is a disgrace. Almost every club in Dublin have full time GDO's and have state of the art facilities. Its obvious that the GAA will do all they can to support Dublin while the weaker counties are struggling to stay a float. We might not have any success in our pleading but its worth fighting for.
Outside croke parks help its up to our Co board to put structures in place that will give us a better chance of success in the future, we will never improve enough to win anything unless a strategic plan is in place and implemented in the best possible way.
What should our Co board do??
1) Hire a full time director of hurling
Who? Cheddar Plunkett - This man has already proved to everybody how good an organizer he is, how intelligent he is and he has shown an incredible passion for the game and above all for his county. Cheddar should be given full support from the county board to carry out his agenda
What should Cheddar do?
- Put a plan together for the future of laois hurling incorporating every aspect of the game in terms of development of players, supporters clubs, fundraising, urban involvement, referees, club development etc
- Put a trusted team (committee) of people in place that he can delegate different jobs to, intelligent passionate laois hurling people like, Pat Critchley, Niall Rigney, Paul Cuddy, John O Sullivan, Enda Lyons, Andy Dunne, Brian Stapleton, Brian Campion, Tommy Fitzgerald etc (There are good people in every club)
Clubs should nominate people they feel would have something to add and those people would be interviewed by Cheddar to assess their suitability, commitment and passion for the job. The difficult part is to get these good people involved as they would be voluntary positions, however with Cheddars persuasive ways and something worthwhile id be confident a good team of men could be assembled for the job.
- Regionalize and expand the setanta and chuchullian programmes, possibly dividing up the county in 4 even zones, supervised buses should be ran to bring players to and from the camps. This would encourage more involvement. Each zone would have a GDO(ideally full time) reporting to Cheddar weekly or bi-weekly. Cheddar would assess each zone on how they are working and how they could be improved, giving assistance to the GDO's as much as possible.
- A Laois hurling school of excellence focused at elite players from the ages of 13 -17 should be formed with individual plans divised for each player to work on their weaknesses, each player should be monitored closely between the ages of 13 - 17. The management teams would be interviewed and hired by cheddar and his committee. All members of management teams should have completed level two coaching course (County level coaching certificate)
- A plan for primary and post primary schools drawn up and implemented, focused on involvement from all primary schools across Laois with weekly coaching sessions from the regional GDO. The GDO's should also be involved in post primary schools hurling and help in preparation of the teams along with the school teachers for their respective competitions.
- Cheddar, his committee and the GDO's should help all clubs across the county to implement their own hurling structures at club level and try to raise the standard to hurling at all levels in the county.
Its time to put pressure on our Co board to do something now before we are so far back that we can never "bridge the gap". It needs to be done and it needs to be done soon!!
These are just some of the ideas that I have, I haven't put that much thought into it so don't jump down my throat!!
I feel my plans are realistic even without financial support from croke park, Offaly managed to hire a full time director of hurling(who has since resigned). We already have two hurling GDO's but we really need at least two more.
Im sure there are people out there with other good ideas and id be interested to hear them...