‘Plenty to do, but we’ll be ready for Dubs,’ promises Micko

NOT for the first time, Mick O’Dwyer is plotting the downfall of Dublin.

O’Dwyer’s Laois powered past Carlow in Portlaoise yesterday to set up a provincial semi-final with the boys in blue.

But the Kerry born manager admits that his team still have quite a bit of preparatory work ahead of them if they are to dethrone the Leinster champions.

“It was a good performance but we will have to improve to take on the Dubs, in Croke Park especially.

“It would be nice to get them out of there, but we’ll hardly get them to Navan, I presume. It would be nice if we could!”

He added: “We are not going to run away with ourselves. That was only the first round of the championship. There is a long way to go yet. The Dubs are going to be a big game for us, but we will be ready for them.”

Yesterday, Laois fashioned victory with a flying start that left Carlow shell-shocked after 20 minutes. And O’Dwyer was happy to see the tactic work so successfully.

“We wanted to get into the game quickly this time because we had a terrible habit of not doing too well in the first half, standing back from players and all that kind of stuff.

“But their work rate was great all over the field today and I think that proved successful for us. If we can keep that up, we have three weeks to get ready and we will have a right good game in Croke Park.

“The team played very well today all over the field. Certainly Beano was back to his best and Donie [Brennan] was a revelation and Kieran Quigley, when he came in, played well.

“We have a lot of good young players and it is a matter of just keeping them going now.”

And O’Dwyer wouldn’t have any problems on the motivational front for the trip to the capital.

“Last year we were seven points down against Dublin at half time and they beat us by a point in the finish. I’ll be looking forward to it. It will be a good game again. You need an element of luck in all championship games so if we get a bit of luck we might be able to take them.”

Former All-Ireland winning Meath midfielder, Liam Hayes, was disappointed with Carlow’s performance which now sends them into a qualifier against his native county.

He was also critical of the decision by referee John Geaney to award a penalty to Laois at a time when Carlow were already reeling from an early onslaught.

“The penalty was a real killer,” he said. “If they had scored four, five or six points it would be a different thing. But the penalty was a real killer and it looked a very strange decision to me.

“I’m not being a bad loser for a second and it did not impinge on the final result but in that opening half it was a big factor because it meant we were five points down at half time instead of being two points down.

“It was a strange decision because we had three men behind the ball and I don’t think anyone took Donie Brennan down.

“I thought the referee was a disaster from start to finish but there is nothing unusual about that. We are used to that. They tend to be harder on the weaker counties like Carlow. You really have to work for it. We were getting defenders booked like flies. We had our whole full-back line booked after 20 minutes and their [Laois] players were getting ticked, and their players were getting away with it, and that makes a big difference in a game like that.

“But it was not much of a football game. We let them own the game in the first 20 minutes.

“We played some football but we did not play anything like we are capable of playing or like we wanted to play. We wanted to go toe to toe with Laois, but that did not happen.”