2022 National Football League

[BallyroanAbu]

It's the optimism that kills, sort out our underage and our Seniors will in time be decent.  Our minors Kilcavan have has many as Portlaoise.  Nice for Kilcavan but there is something seriously wrong when your major population base is not your main source of players .

[High Fielder]

Neither is ignoring it and thinking it's no big deal

[Laoiseabu]

It's the optimism that kills, sort out our underage and our Seniors will in time be decent.  Our minors Kilcavan have has many as Portlaoise.  Nice for Kilcavan but there is something seriously wrong when your major population base is not your main source of players .

In fact Kilcavan have 4 on the panel while Portlaoise have just 3 . I agree that Portlaoise needs be bringing through more quality players at underage if Laois as a county are to progress . The only 2 Portlaoise players on the Laois senior panel are the ageing Lillis and Dillon which is not enough representation for a town of that size . It's a sign of the times . Back in 2003 Aidan Fennelly , Colm Byrne , Kevin Fitzpatrick, Ian Fitzgerald and Colm Parkinson of Portlaoise were all key starters for Laois .

[Laoiseabu]

Neither is ignoring it and thinking it's no big deal

It's a very big deal to Kilcavan and they should be commended for it
[/quote

I agree that Kilcavan should be commended. The likes of Ballyroan Abbey , Timahoe , Spink , The Heath , Park Ratheniska, Barrowhouse , Crettyard , Arles Killeen , Mountmellick , The Rock , ODempseys , Rosenallis, Clonaslee, Ballyfin have no players on the panel . Kilcavan have more representation than all them clubs put together.

[BallyroanAbu]

Kilcavan well done, but if you think this augurs well for Laois Football you must be joking.  It's being going on a few years, hopefully the GDA arrests the slide in Portlaoise. 

[High Fielder]

Is anyone seriously suggesting Kilcavan shouldn't be commended? No.

[High Fielder]

There was no stick at all. It was a comparison and a legitimate one. Quit trying to score points where there are none. The current state of the Portlaoise club should be a major concern for every Laois and Portlaoise supporter, and unless this newly appointed officer can pull rabbits from hats, that won't change overnight.

[mcwregor]

Portlaoise have the population to have up to 70 kids at each under age group. I think the GPO will improve things in time. What will be needed then is another juvenile club in the town.

[Laois man]

I hope you are right for the good of plaois and Laois Gaa who need plaois to be strong. But at the moment it's hard to keep one juvenile club going never mind 2.like a lot of people might not remember but plaois were a serious hurling and football club in the 80s and 90s and were the top club at juvenile aswell. And the plus side of that was laois were strong enough then with a lot of town players involved.

[The real town]

The subject of portlaoise have two teams will always be debated and rightly so but the debate should be at country board level.the fastest growing town in the midlands.I can see one problem is that if this ever was going to happen and portlaoise number 2 team was to be a senior team that will take the place of another and is that the fear of some clubs I don't know. We have too  few underage teams playing A football.when a town as big as mouthmellick needs all its neighbours to compete and there a few more with them I see that as the biggest problem.

[Spiritof86]

Very wary of today . Longford are very much our level and have a guy in charge with a huge point to prove . Interest in the county football team is very low judging attendances  . Division 4 football will be disastrous. Take any sort of win today .

[Silkyskillssunshinee]

This is as bad as it gets. We are rock bottom.

In all honesty, it's probably not the worst thing to go down to Division 4. There's a chance to build a young squad from the bottom up next season and hopefully the management commits to the youth. The last time it seemed to work for Sugrue anyway as he managed back to back promotions and a Leinster final appearance.

If Wicklow have anything about them, they should knock us off in the first round of the Leinster championship. They'll never get a better opportunity considering how poor we are at the minute.

[The PRO]

Relegation could be accepted had we used Div. 3 to introduce
more youth, but it was disheartening to see management going back to the older guys time and time again. Bleak future awaits us.

Not defending Billy.or anything but the pick of the best young lads in the county turned down the invitation to be part of the panel so very hard to introduce young blood then.
To the best of my knowledge and it might not be a complete list either, these lads all weren't interested. Diarmuid Whelan, Ronan Coffey, Robert Tyrrell, Jack Owens, Niall Dunne, Gary Saunders. They were the pick of the last two good under 20 teams.

[High Fielder]

Yeah no fault of Billy's. He has what he has and we're not good enough. It's time to accept that. We have a million problems and nobody to fix them. I genuinely feel this county has no chance with the current County Board in place. We wouldn't do any worse if they stepped aside en masse

[Giovanni]

Being not good enough is one thing but being badly prepared is another. A manager can't control mist of what happens on a football pitch but he can surely work on kick outs (both from an attacking and defensive point of view). When you look at what we've been trying to do on this over the last few games, you would have to say that we are badly prepared. Very disappointing.