Club versus county row unfolding in Laois

THE New Year may be less than two weeks old, but the thorny issue of club versus county is already rearing its head.

In his report to the club’s AGM tomorrow, Portlaoise secretary Peter O’Neill will be extremely critical of a situation last year which saw their senior footballers play three championship games in the space of a week.

Last May, Portlaoise refused to fulfil their first county championship match against St Joseph’s because they did not have access to their players on the Laois panel for 13 days prior to the game as they claimed was their right.

In the event, the county board docked Portlaoise the points for the round robin fixture and the punishment proved costly when they promptly lost their next game to O’Dempseys.

That left them needing to defeat Timahoe to qualify for the knock-out stages and, though they did, they subsequently lost again to O’Dempseys in a three-way play-off. With that they crashed out of the competition.

Many within the club still hold strong feelings about what happened. At one point last year, O’Neill had to quash rumours that the club’s county players were on the verge of withdrawing their services from Mick O’Dwyer’s panel.

Despite their complaints, O’Neill made it clear at the time that the club’s beef was not with the Laois county board but with the GAA who they felt were not doing enough to deal with the club versus county conundrum.

In his report O’Neill talks of his “disgust with the way our senior players were treated in being asked to play three senior knock-out games in one week.’’

He added: “As a result of this, we had seven players injured for the final game. If this is what is known as player welfare, then thank God for the GPA.”

The reigning champions came under fire from many quarters of the county at the time. Club officials stood four-square behind whatever decisions the football team’s players and management took at the time and O’Neill has no qualms about how matters were handled now that more than six months have gone by.

“I make no apologies to anyone for this support and will continue to defend our club and its players and their rights for fair play no matter what the circumstances or repercussions to myself are.”

With last year’s football manager Tommy Conroy now a selector with Liam Kearns on the county team, Portlaoise will be hoping to announce a successor at the AGM tomorrow night.

“The reality is that Portlaoise will have 19 of their senior football panel on some county team,” said O’Neill. “The new manager will want to be able to train with his team while they are playing in the championship.”