They ‘were relentless today’ – Pat Roe

PORTARLINGTON footballers claimed their fourth county title in five years on Sunday, marking the first under manager Pat Roe. After Ronan Coffey lifted the Jack Delaney Cup at Laois Hire O’Moore Park, Roe reflected on their victory.

"I'm very happy with it. I thought it was a great performance overall from start to finish. We were three points up at half-time, and we could have been more with a couple of great goal chances early on. We didn't take them, but I thought we were relentless today, from minute one to minute 60. We kept doing the same thing. We talked about the process, sticking to the process, shining a light on what's right, just keep doing the simple things really, really well and I thought that's what we did throughout the game,” Roe said.

This final also marked the first time this season Roe had Colm Murphy, Robbie Pigott, and Paddy O’Sullivan available. Roe had a plan for their involvement against Portlaoise.

“We had a plan for that. We'd started Colm because he'd had three weeks with us, but we wanted Robbie and Paddy to be able to launch them when the game was there to be pushed on. And they did, and it was a real psychological fill-up for us, but also football-wise, we were able to push on from there,” he said.

Despite losing several players since their last championship win, Roe saw the potential within the team he inherited.

“People thought I was mad. I looked at that team, and I saw winners. These are lads who've won three out of the last four county championships, and there was the core of a winning team still there. Those lads know how to win, and again, you could see it today, they just knew how to win, and they rose to the occasion,” he added.

In a closely contested first half, only a Jake Foster goal separated the sides at the break, with Portarlington missing several goal chances.

“The chat at half-time was that we were three points up; we were where we wanted to be. We knew we should have been further ahead, but we pinpointed the first 10 minutes of the second half as the time to put the foot to the pedal and really drive on from there. During the league, we'd lost games in the first 10 minutes of the second half, and we endeavoured not to let that happen again. We felt we had superior footballers and a game plan that would work. We wanted to impose our game on Portlaoise, and for the most part, I thought we did that,” Roe explained.

Looking ahead, Roe and his players will now face either Baltinglass or Tinahely in the Leinster Championship on October 20.

“We'll re-centre ourselves. We'll take a few days off and celebrate this; it's a great win for the lads, and we'll give them a chance to celebrate that. Then we'll have a look again at that,” Roe concluded.