Laois no match physically for Wexford who had a ruthless streak in them

DAYS at the office don’t come much tougher than it did for the Laois minor hurlers on Saturday afternoon when Wexford came to visit for their Leinster Minor Hurling Championship clash.

Laois have had to jump a myriad of hurdles just to get to this stage of the championship and they’ve been mightily impressive in doing so.

They’re currently under the tutelage of Brendan Phelan who has been doing excellent work at underage level for the county for years.

Earlier in the campaign they overcame Kildare and Kerry to set up a huge clash with Antrim, and it’s an Antrim side that would have fancied themselves to go far in this competition as they’re also consistently improving at the underage grades but the O’Moore men held them at bay and made it into Tier 1 Phase 2.

Their prize for defeating Antrim was qualification to this portion of the competition and up first for Phelan’s men was the visit of Galway, one of the competition’s favourites and though the Galwegians travelled back west with a win, Laois held themselves well and held them to just four points against the odds.

That result gave some hope ahead of Wexford’s visit that a good result could be on the cards, but it just wasn’t to be and it was clear from very early on that it wasn’t going to be.

Wexford came with a hugely powerful and physical side that were dominant from the off.

They raced into a 2-10 to 0-1 lead after just fifteen minutes, and there was no wind that could even be blamed as the sun shone down on Laois’s HQ and a timid breeze gently blew.

The dominance was all down to an incredible Wexford side against a weary Laois side who have had to battle all the odds just to get to face the higher tier teams.

Laois were no match physically for their opponents who had a ruthless streak in them, but that’s also down to the nature of this competition.

It’s a criss-cross structure like we saw in the Laois Senior Hurling Championship and as such, score difference will likely come into play especially with how other results have gone this weekend.

Up next for Laois is a game against Westmeath, and that’s a Westmeath side that defeated Dublin while Laois were playing Wexford.

Laois will need to draw on their earlier performances if they are to get anything from that Westmeath game in the hopes of keeping their championship alive.

The Wexford game was hopefully an outlier in what has been a very successful campaign so far and if Laois can pull themselves together over the coming days they’re still in with a chance.

The likes of LJ Cuddy, Bobby O’Connor and Callum Jones can do serious damage when fed the ball as we’ve seen throughout the year but they were unable to get the ball past the purple wall of Wexford jerseys on Saturday.

It’s a learning curve for both the players and management against the higher tier of opposition and it’s something they’ll need to have worked out before Westmeath.