Byron hoping Lady Luck will shine on Laois at long last

FERGAL BYRON feels it’s about time that the Laois footballers got a little rub of the green.

Last year they were pipped by Westmeath in the Leinster final replay. Less than a week later they crashed out of the championship to Tyrone, a loss compounded by the horror injury to Brian ‘Beano’ McDonald.

A year on and Lady Luck was not part of the Laois entourage for the Leinster Final defeat to Dublin at Croke Park. In the closing moments Ross Munnelly and Tom Kelly were desperately close but that element of good fortune was again absent.

“It was hard to believe that we had two chances to draw the game,” Byron says of the Leinster decider. “But, to be fair to Ross he had taken an awful lot of hardship during the game and maybe it was too much to ask of him at that stage. Last year we did not have any luck with Kevin Fitzpatrick (when he narrowly missed with a goal shot at the end of the replay) and we didn’t have it with both of the chances we missed in this year’s final,’’ he added.

He suggests it was Laois’ inability to play to their potential in the first half which cost them victory.

“It was really our play in the first ten or fifteen minutes which put us in a bad position approaching half-time. Had we done better, we would not have left ourselves with so much to do later on.

“A few things stood out at the start which didn’t seem right. At that stage, it would have been greater if we had the opportunity for a ‘time-out’ to rectify things. But naturally we had to weather the storm until half time. Dublin put up the type of challenge that we expected. They were very well organised and they had their homework done on us. From the outset it was clear that they were really ‘up’ for the game. You could see it in the way the management and the subs lined up on the sideline during the parade. Dublin had a point to prove and in the end they did just that. We got our heads together during the break and Mick got us going again. We produced the type of performance that we would have been looking for in the first half!’’

While Laois don’t fear Derry, Byron says that the Northerners have earned a lot of respect over the last two years.

“We played them up in Breffni Park in the qualifiers three years ago and they beat us. They went on to qualify for the All-Ireland quarter-final and then the semi-final and they did the same last year. They seem to be the back-door specialists. They get better with every game.’’

Paddy Bradley and Enda Muldoon are obviously the key men but to single them out is a disservice to Mickey Moran’s selection

“They did not get this far just through their strong play. From the goalkeeper forward they are a very formidable outfit. How we deal with their challenge throughout the field will determine how well we got on.’’