Tougher challenges lie ahead for Laois hurlers

A hectic first four weeks of the year have come to an end for the Laois hurlers and overall it has been a successful time with some good performances thrown in, though it’s certain that there’s room to improve.

The devastating first half demolition of Mayo has undoubtedly been the highlight, but the second half left a lot to be desired as they failed to truly push on from their first half dominance, though as Tommy Fitzgerald himself said there was surely an element of human nature in that as the game was well and truly over as a contest when the team appeared for the second half.

Before a ball was pucked Mayo were noted as being arguably the weakest team in the division, with Derry not too far in front which meant for an ‘easy’ intro to Division 2 for Laois with the Ulster team making the trek down to O’Moore Park on Sunday for Round 2 off the back of a hammering from a rejuvenated Kerry side in Celtic Park in their opener.

It became very apparent early on that Derry’s main mission on Sunday was to avoid another thrashing as they packed out their defence with a sweeper along with a third midfielder, making life very difficult for the Laois forwards to gain much momentum or find a scoring flow as they had to battle their way through a sea of red jerseys to get a shot off.

To their credit, the Derry tactics worked as Laois didn’t manage to get a single shot at goal for the entirety of the contest, a world away from the ease at which they danced past the Mayo men in Tooreen just seven days previous.

The Laois full forward line of James Keyes, Mossy Keyes and Cillian Dunne combined for 5-7 against Mayo and ran absolutely riot in doing so, but they were held to just two points on Sunday and failed to really penetrate the Derry men.

However, the half forward line on Sunday of Aaron Dunphy, Jack Kelly and Martin Phelan took the lead and combined for twenty of Laois’s 25 points as Laois were forced to take their shots from range more often than usual rather than trying to do the impossible by running into a plethora of Derry men to get inside.

Even when Derry had a man sent off they persisted with a sweeper and almost accepted that they weren’t going to win the game, it was more a matter of not losing by too much.

This is a relatively new challenge in itself for Laois as having generally been in the upper echelons of the NHL and playing against the top tier teams, there’s been no occasions when they’ve had to try to break down a team that are just fighting for their lives and not trying to attack with intent.

Those two games were somewhat of a no-win situation for Fitzgerald and his team, but it’s two wins from two and now with a welcome three week break they can focus on the tougher challenges to come as Kerry and Westmeath await in the next two rounds.

It’s those games that we will really get to see where this team is at and what the year may hold for us.