Youth of Laois have one more final fling

Tom Humphrieson how the best underage GAA structure in the country has been paying off for the O'Moore County

There was no meeting, no epiphany, no template chiselled out on a tablet of stone and handed down to the faithful. Success didn't come by accident either, though. Laois just got down to work and ended up creating the best and most consistent underage structure in the country.

Maybe this year won't be the year the big dividend pays out. Maybe it will. Some day soon, though, the prolonged excellence of the underage structure in Laois is going to be repaid with a senior All-Ireland win. There are few who would begrudge it.

We tend to forget how far Laois have come in a relatively short time.

Back in 1986 when they beat Monaghan by a point in a fairly glamour-free National Football League final it meant little to anybody outside of Laois. That win gave Laois their first major trophy since 1946, however.

Seán Dempsey had two brothers playing that day 21 years ago and has often said since it was no coincidence that in 1995 Laois reached their first Leinster minor final since 1973 or that the following year they won the first of three provincial minor titles in a row, a run that would bring two successive All-Irelands and a narrow defeat to Tyrone in 1998, which would have yielded three in a row nationally also.

"1986 inspired young lads in Laois and since 1996 what has happened at underage in the county has kept young fellas interested."

The pay-off so far has been modest at senior level. The 2003 Leinster championship win ended a 57-year famine but was celebrated, as were the underage successes of the 1990s, as if the Sam Maguire were in the mail. Still Laois have kept on.

Dempsey, who has given 11 years to underage work within the county, recalls being in Croke Park with the Laois minors that day in 2003.

"We were beaten by Dublin in the minor final that day. We sat in the stand after getting beat, just sat there to watch the senior game. We had no interest. I looked at the video of the senior game last week to refresh myself. The first half I can't remember seeing it at all on the day of the match.

"I remember, though, the final whistle and all the minors running down and jumping the barrier at the front of the Cusack, to race across the field. The memory of losing was gone within an hour and a half. I remember seeing Brendan Quigley jump up from the top of the barrier and out clear over a steward's head. This weekend Brendan is playing midfield with Pádraig Clancy. Two clubmates."

On Sunday, Dempsey will be in Croke Park as a Laois senior selector. Today, though, he brings the county under-15 development panel to Meath for a blitz competition. On the way home tonight they will stop in the Green Isle Hotel for a meal.

Same hotel and same quality of food the senior and minor sides will avail of tomorrow.

That Leinster final defeat in 2003, oddly, marked the beginning of a new era in Laois underage football after a slight lull. Laois returned to the competition through the back door. Drew with Dublin in the All-Ireland final. Beat them in the replay in Carlow.

From the Dublin team of that year just two, Ger Brennan and Mark Vaughan, are involved in the senior panel tomorrow. For Laois, Cathal Ryan, Peter O'Leary, Brendan Quigley and Michael Tierney will start.

Donie Brennan is a sub and Colm Kelly (St Joseph's) would have a place if he weren't injured.

Likewise Cahir Healy, who captained this year's Laois under-21 football side to the All-Ireland final, would almost certainly have a starting defender's jersey on him if he hadn't opted this summer to focus on his first love, hurling.

Niall Donagher, Mark Timmons and Rory Stapleton are also subs tomorrow and, of course, Colm Begley has been whisked away to Australia.

Craig Rogers, the captain in 2003, was cut from the senior panel in January but starred in the county's under-21 campaign.

That is quite a haul of talent, and things keep getting better. Having won the 2003 All-Ireland minor title, Laois tagged on minor provincial titles the following two years and tomorrow send another minor side to Croke Park to play Carlow in a novel final.

Carlow spend the winter playing in the Ulster minor league and have earned respect but it will be a surprise if this Laois minor side are beaten tomorrow or indeed this summer.

Laois underage teams in the past decade or so have generally been physically small. The team which takes the field in Croke Park tomorrow already has anyone with an eye to the future slavering and drooling. John O'Loughlin and Donie Kingston would be big men if they were playing senior. Conor Meredith isn't far behind.

And the small forward on view is something a little special too.

James Doyle transferred from Athy to his parents' home place, St Joseph's, this spring. For various reasons including a sparkling career as an underage soccer international and an objection from Athy, he hadn't played Gaelic football since a Féile final when he was 14.

It's often said derogatorily of a player that he isn't the first cousin of a footballer. Doyle is a cousin of Beano McDonald, Donie Kingston and Donie Brennan. He gets his first start tomorrow having come in as a sub to help blitz Offaly in the semi-final. His speed marks him as something special.

That Doyle hasn't come off the Laois conveyor belt makes him unusual in a county where the business of scouring for talent leaves no stone unturned.

Seán Dempsey recalls an under-14 trials weekend back in the late 90s. Laois had 140 boys out for football trials. Thirteen years previously there had been just over 280 males born in the entire county of Laois.

"So 50 per cent of the eligible boys were out for trials that weekend. And I don't know how many of the others would be in the hurling regions. Since then the numbers have gone up but the population has risen, so I wouldn't say we are getting the same percentage."

Laois's secret is they have no secret. Just hard work and good communication and a county board that want success.

"We have a good programme for development-squad players," says Dempsey, "and we are good at keeping the programme going throughout the summer.

"If you take on a development squad as manager you know the time frame, when they can train and can't train. Saturday mornings are the norm. There is no interference from the juvenile board in arranging matches. Saturday mornings are when the county squads train. That has been in place for a long time and it is a big plus."

The quality of coaches is important and Laois have found a string of good coaches. This year's under-16 squad, for instance, are looked after by Eamonn Whelan, PJ Dempsey and Eamonn Delaney, three former Laois senior captains. Names like that bring credibility but Laois have been instrumental too in surveying their own club scene and noting the typical underage coach who takes his son's teams until minor and then seems to fade away, taking 10 years of experience into the armchair with him

That type of coaching ability has been lured into the development system and suits the type of coach who is happy to help out for three or four hours a week on a Saturday morning.

Schools have been a help. When Knockbeg won the All-Ireland two years ago 20 of the panel were from Laois. The same year Portlaoise CBS won the B All-Ireland. Cumann na mBunscol goes well in Laois.

" We are small," says Seán Dempsey. "Graiguecullen to Mountmellick, the county is 50 miles long. From Ballybrittas over to Ballyroan is just 14 or 15 miles. It's easy to get teams together."

And the county board provide generously. Teams up to under-16 do their own fundraising. After that everything is provided.

Laois underage sides are better dressed, better kitted out, better fed and better travelled than any of their counterparts.

There have been problems. Nobody denies that the players who emerged in the three years from 1996 weren't handled perfectly in a county suddenly awash with optimism.

Then there are the perennial problems. As Seán Dempsey points out, there is not a structure anywhere that deals with the 19-year-old who isn't good enough for the under-21 panel. In a county teeming with talented 19-year-old lads that is a difficulty.

"You don't want to lose them in that situation. But a lad goes to work in Dublin, what can be done? Do you spend resources, money and time on a team of under-19s who have no competition to play in? Who wants to get that sort of squad together? You need to be working towards an end."

In 2002 Dempsey experimented with an under-17 side. It fell apart. So in 2003 he had 41 on the minor panel.

"We picked the best 24 for the championship. Everyone outside that was under 17. We had the following year's minor team with us. Basically, in 2003 we had the 2004 minor team training with us - bar one or two other lads who came in.

"It was the same in 2004 and 2005."

Tomorrow's minor manager, Eddie Kelly, has 37 players with him in training. The last eight or nine on the group are all under-17s being groomed for next year, when they will slot in with players on tomorrow's team who are still under 17.

That all costs money and the county board raised their eyebrows initially. Success sweetened the medicine, though.

Dempsey remembers being parked outside the cinema in Portlaoise a few years ago. He saw a gang of familiar faces emerging from a film. Nine young lads, all minor footballers. He ran the faces through his brain: six different clubs represented in a Friday-night social gathering.

"It would be hard to get that anywhere. From the time they are 14 we are taking them away on bus trips, and lads from different clubs know each other and hang around together.

"The underage teams have the same spirit as club teams have. You'd never have four fellas from one club sitting together in a corner."

There is work to be done. Dempsey reckons lots of it. Meanwhile, two losing under-21 All-Ireland final appearances niggle them despite their having won Leinster for the last two years and having a strong chance of continuing that sequence next spring.

Along the road, though, there have been enough small pleasures to make the journey worthwhile even if a senior All-Ireland never comes.

Dempsey recalls an under-15 tournament final against Dublin played in Dunshaughlin. Laois were five points down with as many minutes left and won the thing scoring points. That team graduated to be this year's Leinster under-21 champions.

They were most unlucky to lose the All-Ireland final to Cork but the pleasure for Laois is the seniors don't need to pillage that panel too deeply. Back in 1998 when Laois previously made the final at under-21 more than half the team were starting at senior level and weren't able for it.

Success comes dripping slow but in the vineyards the work has been done.

Laois - 2007 Leinster Final Team

Pedigree Corner

F ByronLeinster under-21 medal in 1994

C Ryan2003 All-Ireland Minor

T Kelly1997 All-Ireland Minor

J Higgins1997 All-Ireland Minor

P McMahonUnder-21 2005, Minor in 2002

D Rooney1997 All-Ireland Minor

B McCormack1998 Leinster Minor

... (beaten in All-Ireland final)

P Clancy1998 Leinster Minor

... (beaten in All-Ireland final)

B Quigley2003 All-Ireland Minor

P O'Leary2003 All-Ireland Minor

C Conway1996 All-Ireland Minor

C Parkinson1996 All-Ireland Minor

M Tierney2003 All-Ireland Minor

P Lawlor2000 Minor

R Munnelly2000 Minor