Midlanders trying to catch a spark from the embers of qualifiers

IN FOCUS MIDLANDS MALAISE: MALACHY CLERKINlooks at the reasons behind the recent lack of footballing success for Laois, Westmeath and Offaly

FOR A few weeks back in 2004, they were the life and soul of the summer.Whereas the other provinces took a while to crawl from the chrysalis that year, the Leinster championship was a doozy throughout.

What ended with Westmeath beating Laois after a replay for their very first Leinster title had begun with Páidí Ó Sé’s new side finding a point to spare over Offaly for the first time in 55 years. Along the way Laois had skewered Meath by seven points and Westmeath had ended Dublin’s interest prior to the semi-final stage for the first time in six seasons. Suddenly, the old certainties meant nothing.

It was like a warm sirocco blew up through the midlands for a spell and hooshed happiness on the faces of counties that hardly recognised the feeling anymore. Sandwiched between Laois and Westmeath, Offaly weren’t short of diversion either. After losing to Westmeath, they put up 2-17 to beat Kildare in the first round of the qualifiers and were level with Wexford going into the last 15 minutes in mid-July.

They lost in the end but only because Mattie Forde was on his way to Wexford’s first football All Star and the GPA’s Footballer Of The Year award. Offaly could console themselves in the knowledge that his 2-10 that day would have beaten anyone. A fortnight later, they could take further solace from the fact that the new Leinster champions were a team that only beat them by a point.

Seems a lifetime ago. Laois, Offaly and Westmeath are qualifier fodder now.

Dublin took the next five Leinster titles and left the rest of the province flapping like fresh-caught fish on the pier. Laois ran them to a point in the final in 2005 but were beaten much more convincingly than even just the six points on the scoreboard said in 2007. Offaly kept on keeping on and made a final in 2006, only to swoon at Dublin’s knees.

Westmeath looked set for their first final in five years last summer before being swept away by Louth’s bristle and bang. These are drought conditions in the midlands, with neither sight nor sign of rain.

“The problem you always face is that you’re in the same province as Dublin,” says Fergal Byron, Laois’s goalkeeper through that decade. “And when Dublin get themselves right they’re going to probably be too strong for everyone else. I was watching a thing on TV the other night on Dessie Farrell. Coming to the end of his career, Dublin were starting to struggle. That’s when Westmeath and ourselves made our breakthroughs. But you always knew they’d be back.”

Age-old enmities and apathies don’t help either. You’re talking about three counties that pay more than just lip service to the idea of fostering some sort of standards at both codes. Admittedly, that isn’t going very well for all concerned but there are roots at least where other counties can only point to weeds. That’s time, effort and manpower spread thinly across small population bases.

“When it comes to Laois,” says Byron, “we’re a small county to begin with.

“Then if you draw a line from Clonaslee on the Offaly border down to Craiguecullen on the Carlow border, everything below that is hurling country. And while some of the hurling people will go to see the footballers and some of the football people will go watch the hurlers, they’ll only do so if the teams are going well.”

It’s all connected. Clonaslee is hard by the Offaly border and that line Byron talks about cuts through the neighbouring county as well. Tullamore is 10 miles to the north of Clonaslee, Birr about 15 miles to the south west.

You only need to have had a passing acquaintance with the GAA pages this last fortnight to know it isn’t so much a line as a meeting of two plates.

It was always tough enough to get the tide to rise enough for all boats in peacetime. After all the bother with O’Connor Park and Michael Duignan, this could hardly be called peacetime.

So they’re left with the qualifiers. Westmeath head to Casement Park today for a coin-toss of a game against Antrim. Denis Glennon and Dessie Dolan will still be the classiest forwards on the pitch but if their defence is as leaky as it was against Wexford a fortnight ago, their summer will end today. The only year they made a run through the qualifiers was 2006, coincidentally the last year Laois did likewise. Westmeath beat London, Limerick, Sligo and Offaly that year; Laois took Tyrone, Meath and, as it happened, Offaly.

But since then it has been extremely thin gruel. Laois, Offaly and Westmeath have played 16 qualifier matches between them since 2006 and won only five.

The closest anyone came to an odyssey was last year when Offaly put two of them together to squeeze past Clare and brush past Waterford before gamely falling to Down by just two points. They face Monaghan tonight in Tullamore, a game for which they are home underdogs.

In fact, it’s 10-1 against the treble of all three teams winning through today, with Laois taking on a Tipperary side that beat them at the same stage last year. It’s a sign of sad times in the midlands that only a brave man would take that bet.