SEMI FINALISTS of last year, Laois have fallen into a big black hole in the League and there doesn't appear to be any way out for them.

That was the frank assessment from their plain talking manager Babs Keating after Laois came up way short of the mark and fell to their third successive defeat at Nowlan Park yesterday.

Relegation is already beckoning, and Keating has accepted that Division Two looks on the cards next season.

"We have no forwards and we can't buy them," was the simple way Keating expressed their greatest problem. "I a all but resigned to playing in Division Two next sea son. The priority now is to get a team together to do Laois proud in the Leinster championship. Kilkenny didn't play particularly well and still they were fair value for the seven point win their second in the league.

Yet there was no sparkle to the Cats" play and the game took a dreary route for the 5,000 crowd.

Laois were full of effort and commitment until they conceded the only goal of the game in the 19th minute. Afterwards even the brave hearts at the back, who kept the ship afloat as best they could, became resigned to the inevitable as the game ran away from them.

A mighty clearance from Pat O'Neill was gathered by the flying Niall Moloney and he sprinted through the Laois defence to drill the ball to the net. With a few nice scores from DJ Carey and points also from Liam Keoghan and Denis Byrne, the Cats led comfortably by 1-8 to 0-1 at half time.

The losers should have goaled through Tony Dunne in the 34th minute but he seemed so surprised to get the ball right in front of the Kilkenny net that he lost the run of himself and a first rate chance to get into the game disappeared.

That was more or less the end of it for the losers. Kilkenny, with Carey throwing over points from frees and Adrian Ronan, Andy Comerford and Charlie Carter also getting in on the scoring act, eased away to claim a handy victory.