The night that Laois opened their 2024 National League campaign with a narrow win over Longford, goalkeeper Killian Roche filled his boots.
The Clare native was his team’s joint top scorer that evening, lamping three points from play and two more from frees.
He performed a similar function earlier this year when powering UCD to another Sigerson Cup final with important points from play against DCU, MTU Kerry and TU Dublin.
This year’s Sigerson Cup was played under the 2024 rules while the first five games of the 2025 league also afforded adventurous goalkeepers such as Roche plenty of freedom to roam and score as 12 v 11 overloads were permitted.
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But the shift in rules since then has cut the legs off sweeper keepers who are back focusing on the bread-and-butter basics of goalkeeping again: shot-stopping and kickouts.
The Killeshin clubman will be back in action on Saturday evening when Laois travel to Newbridge to play Offaly in the final round of Tailteann Cup group games. A Laois win could see the 2024 finalists top the table and advance directly to a quarter-final.
But is it all still floating Roche’s boat like it used to and is football as fun with his wings clipped?
“The game probably needed changing in a way. You don’t mind it so much. I’d be more worried about the kickout rule. That’s probably the one that bothers me a bit more,” Roche said.
“Taking away the back-pass from the keeper is one thing, but still insisting on the kickout going long, that you have to kick it out beyond the arc, is another layer.
“Like, if you go short, but you can’t pass back to the keeper, that’s risky enough in itself. And that was kind of the issue in the past, where teams went short, got it back to their keeper and had the extra man so they could play keep ball. You can’t do that any more.
“That’s the one frustrating thing I find with the new rules, but I don’t mind the rest of them. Every keeper is in the same boat, so you just have to adapt and move on.”
Ulster trio Niall Morgan, Rory Beggan and Ethan Rafferty were typically identified as the most attack-minded goalkeepers under the rules that pertained before the mid-league change.
But Roche was just as keen to live life on the edge and to burst forward in search of a score while leaving the backdoor unlocked.
“Since the rules changed, I haven’t been going up as much,” he said.
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“You can see it in the GPS numbers even, the distance covered has gone down considerably. It is probably hard to tell an outfield player to stay back for the sake of me going up.
“There are advantages there too. Ethan Rafferty is probably the best at it, he’s a natural outfield player, too, and he’s obviously a great man to bring up the pitch because he’s fresh and it allows other players to get a rest when they’re staying back.
“So it works for some, but for other counties it doesn’t at all. It is probably harder now to tell an outfield player to hold back for you to go up.”
Roche remains a vital cog in the Laois machine as they prepare for what will be a huge derby game on Saturday in neutral Newbridge.
A Laois win, allied to a Wicklow win over Waterford elsewhere, would leave three teams – Laois, Offaly and Wicklow – all locked on four points, bringing scoring difference into play.
Truth be told, anything could happen when it comes to Laois and the Tailteann Cup. They reached last year’s final, and a semi-final in 2023, yet have also endured some of their worst days as inter-county players in the tier-two competition.
Roche, who has started 15 of the 16 games that Laois have contested since the Tailteann Cup began in 2022, was in goals for the 2023 semi-final defeat to Down, when they coughed up 8-16.
“It was a dark day. They drew with London that season too. More recently, they lost to division four side Wicklow in round two of this year’s competition, a reversal that few anticipated. It remains a tournament they desperately want to win,” he said.
“You can see the prize at the end of it, it’s a pathway to Sam Maguire.”
His native county, Clare, will compete in that competition on Sunday when they travel to play Monaghan in Clones.
Roche was on the Clare panel for three seasons, between 2016 and 2018, before injury, then a move to the midlands for college prompted a club and county switch.
“Where I’m living now, that’s where my life is,” he said. “I’ve been living on the Carlow/Laois border for the last seven or eight years now.”
