Beefed-up Laois are also packing a punch

A STRANGER ambling through Laois or Kildare this past two weeks would be forgiven for thinking it was a boxing or wrestling show in the pipeline this week.

Three weeks ago, Kildare ended Westmeath’s reign as provincial champions with a degree of physicality - perfectly legal, it must be said - that has depicted them as the tough guys in the eyes of some Laois supporters.

Those fears are grounded in their own perceived shortcomings as much as Kildare’s beef. In the All-Ireland quarter-final against Armagh two years ago, the Ulster boys were almost to a man taller than Laois and twice as wide with it, but, this year, Mick O’Dwyer sought to remedy that by digging out the number of John Doran. An army officer and Kildare native based in the Curragh, Doran had drilled O’Dwyer’s Kildare through the odyssey of 1998 before pitching tent down the road with Tom Cribbins in Laois for the next two years.