Laois’s Séamus Plunkett calls long-term vision of GAA into question

Laois 0-19 Dublin 4-17

We’ll keep what happened on the field brief. It’s what was said by Séamus ‘Cheddar’ Plunkett on the same grass afterwards that should matter.

Of course, it won’t. The Laois manager expects his latest plea to address hurling’s problems to rebound against a bureaucratic wall of silence.

Suffice to say, Conal Keaney returned to full forward and shone like he first did when hurling the life out of Kilkenny defenders way back in 2004. Not that his bullet goal and three points, from all over O’Moore Park, was enough to out-shine either Schutte brother.

Paul Schutte more than atoned for the roasting his unfit body suffered against Galway greyhound Cathal Mannion, while Mark was untouchable in the opening half, helping himself to 2-1 before creating Keaney’s and Dublin’s third goal with an lovely cut-back assist.

That made it 3-8 to 0-11 to all but stamp out Laois’s impressive resistance.

Everyone showed up, initially. Willie Hyland had the main stand reverberating with three inspirational points. Cha Dwyer also landed 0-3 from distance and Zane Keenan did his duty from placed ball as belief surged through local ranks.

But Eamon ‘Trollier’ Dillon’s third score enabled Dublin to escape the opening stanza with a 3-9 to 0-13 lead. Paul Ryan, Keaney and Dillon tacked on more points early in the second half to all but settle the revolt. Laois, in fairness, died during a scoreless 14-minute period.

"We have only a week to turn it around," Ger Cunningham said. "The performance we gave won't be good enough to get us into the quarter-final."

Honour intact Not against Clare or Limerick. Peter Kelly, their pacy fullback, won't be fit and Cunningham says he won't make the Paul Schutte mistake twice.

Laois bow out with honour intact but the fact remains that their manager felt compelled to resign in late May because of the usual Laois GAA antics.

Thankfully, Plunkett, the closest they have come to a hurling revolutionary in 100 years (1915 being the last time a Laois man held Liam McCarthy), returned but more unnecessary damage was done.

“This is nothing to do with me,” he says, killing the obvious line of questioning stone dead. “Anything we do has to be about Laois hurling and only about that . . . It’s not about people, it’s about systems and structures and about the quality of work that people put in.

Cheddar is surrounded by recording devices as dozens of kids happily puck about despite the ancient tannoy voice demanding they remove themselves and their odd-looking sticks.

“I can’t say this more clearly to people who have influence here,” Plunkett continued, reiterating his everlasting lament. “There is an opportunity in Laois at the moment to do something absolutely brilliant. There are a lot of businesses out there trying to flog products and they don’t have the natural customers that you see in this field at the minute.”

Sliotars whizz over and under head. Most are killed stone dead by decent first touches. It’s only 30 kilometres to the Kilkenny border.

“I’ve presented it to enough people at GAA headquarters but for some reason they just close their eyes to this and that is just incredibly disappointing.

“I’m not just saying that after this defeat, I’ve been saying it for three years. It’s time for somebody here to wake up and decide how this thing is going to be done better. Because certainly what is being done in the last 30 years is not working.

“We need somebody to look at this differently and take advantage of the opportunities that are arising. And I’d be saying exactly the same thing about Westmeath and Carlow and other counties. They are giving everything they can to improve themselves. And that’s not easy. We’re a small county. We just don’t have the revenues generating that other counties have.

“Will people continue to sit on their hands while all these people do all this work and an opportunity is here? I can’t keep asking that question often enough.

“It’s about a complete vision for hurling. How we’re going to promote the game. What is the objective here? Is the objective for the next 40 years to have an All-Ireland championship where only three counties can win it? Because we’ve had that for the last 40 years.

“If that’s what they want, let them stand up and be honest and say it.

“And we’ll all go away and do something else. But if the vision is to support people like us in what we’re doing, let them stand back and say what has worked before isn’t working and let’s do something different.”

Dublin: 1 Gary Maguire; 2 Niall Corcoran, 3 Cian O'Callaghan, 4 Paul Schutte; 5 Chris Crummy, 6 Liam Rushe (capt), 7 Shane Barrett (0-1); 8 Johnny McCaffrey (0-1), 8 Ryan O'Dwyer (0-1); 10 Cian Boland, 11 Eamon Dillon (0-4), 12 Danny Sutcliffe; 13 Paul Ryan (0-5, four frees), 14 Conal Keaney (1-3), 15 Mark Schutte (2-1). Substitutions: 18 S Durkin for S Barrett (50 mins, inj), 25 David O'Callaghan (1-0) for C Boland

(59 mins), 24 David Treacy for P Ryan (68 mins), 22 Daire Plunkett

(0-1) for D Sutcliffe (69 mins).

Laois: 1 Eoin Reilly; 3 Cahir Healy, 6 Matthew Whelan (0-1), 4 Brian Stapleton; 5 Joe Fitzpatrick (0-1, capt), 7 Tom Delaney (0-1), 8 Dwane Palmer; 17 Patrick Whelan, 9 Patrick Purcell; 10 Stephen Maher (0-1),

11 Zane Keenan (0-6, five frees), 12 Charles Dwyer (0-3); 13 Tommy Fitzgerald, 14 Willie Hyland (0-4), 15 Joe Campion (0-1).

Substitutions: 2 John A Delaney for B Stapleton (half-time), 20 J Walsh for P Purcell, 21 Neil Foyle (0-1) for T Fitzgerald (both 42 mins), PJ Scully for P Whelan (46 mins), 18 Ben Conroy for S Maher (67

mins)

Referee: J Ryan (Tipperary).