Third time’s a charm

LAOIS have were able to shake off the hurt of the last two years with an excellent win over Carlow in Croke Park on Saturday afternoon to finally get their hands on the Joe McDonagh Cup.

There was a fear of Laois becoming the Mayo of the Joe McDonagh Cup if they were to lose a third one in a row, but it felt like Laois’s day fairly early in the contest.

Carlow did throw the cat amongst the pigeons with a goal in the first minute, though they completely failed to build on that and Laois hit a series of score in succession while keeping the Fighting Cocks scoreless for almost 20 minutes.

The vocal Laois outfit in Hill 16 grew louder and louder with every score registered from Laois and they began to start celebrating each Carlow wide also, of which there were 23.

Carlow couldn’t buy a score for that opening 20 minutes or so with the usually volatile James Doyle, Chris Nolan and Marty Kavanagh unable to get anything going on the inside forward line.

That was in no small part down to the excellent work of the Laois backs, Podge Delaney put in a brilliant display at full back on Nolan and didn’t set a foot wrong for the contest while also making a couple of goal denying blocks as he threw his body on the line to protect the Laois nets.

Each one of the starting six Laois backs were excellent and while Carlow will be kicking themselves over their wides and some of them were poor, but a lot of them were forced through good defensive work from Laois.

Carlow felt like it was one they threw away due to the sheer amount of wides, and while it was a factor, Laois were simply the better side in Croke Park on the big day and they’re a side with more road ahead of them you would think.

Cillian Dunne is one of those Laois men with a world of road ahead of them and the youngest appeared in a Laois jersey in Croke Park for the first time on Saturday and put in an incredible man of the match display in scoring 1-6 from play.

His clubmate Picky Maher was also outstanding on the half forward line and his incredible work to get back to fitness has been paid back with his second Joe McDonagh Cup medal.

Maher made it his mission to come back from a second ACL injury and he’s been a talisman for Laois this year both on and off the field, guiding the likes of Dunne in how to be a top class intercounty hurler.

The Leinster Hurling Championship now awaits for this group of players in 2027 and while some may have been thinking of retiring on a high, can they turn down the chance to have a go against the big boys?

We saw this year that Kildare and Offaly pulled off some huge results in the Leinster Championship and this group will be thinking that those two counties aren’t all that much better than them.

If this group can remain together over the winter and with the excellent management team that has been shaped there’s no reason why they can’t go on to take a skelp or two in the higher tier.

That’s all for next year though and the team will be living in the moment of this victory and enjoying their celebrations.

And rightly so, they’ve provided the world of entertainment to the Laois faithful this year and they deserve every bit of their celebrating and adulation.