Conroy seeks to come full circle
His Portlaoise team had just fallen short of an All-Ireland title by two points and no amount of condolences were going to penetrate his darkening mood.
In fairness, Ballina’s manager had done his best to comfort him. Tommy Lyons had suspended his own celebrations to enter the Portlaoise dressing room and urge them to remember everything they had achieved in getting so far.
It was a good effort but, as Conroy told reporters minutes later, “nobody comes to an All-Ireland final to get beaten. It’s a huge disappointment. We have been going helter-skelter for the past year. It will be a long road back”.
How right he was.
That was almost five years ago and it has taken until now for Portlaoise to shrug off the sense of loss that engulfed them that St Patrick’s Day and return with a team committed and capable of getting to that stage again.
They relinquished their county and provincial titles later in 2005 when Stradbally pipped them by a point in the Laois SFC final, and they were nowhere to be seen 12 months later when Ballyroan Abbey and Arles-Killeen shared the big day. The tide began to turn in 2007 with another county title but their performance in Leinster was perfunctory. The 2008 season was a carbon copy, which is to say good, but hardly good enough for a club with such a pedigree in Leinster.
That has finally been put to rights in recent weeks. Laois was conquered with a swagger, Leinster has thus far – one rain-interrupted game against Clara aside – been equally quick to yield to their charms and now Garrycastle await in tomorrow’s provincial decider in O’Connor Park.
Five years ago, Portlaoise claimed their sixth Leinster title with a brand of football that was reminiscent of the fluid, up-tempo game Mick O’Dwyer’s Laois team had used to win a provincial title two years earlier, and something similar is happening now.
“We’ve got back to playing like we did then,” says veteran Aidan Fennelly. “The young lads coming in have freshened things up and there are a lot of lads fighting for places, which hasn’t always been the case for us with Portlaoise.
“I know other clubs in the county are always saying that we have a huge pick being in the county town but we usually only have the guts of 18 or 19 players and we’d be depending on the same starting 15 all the time.
“It wasn’t like that in 2004 and it’s the same now. Lads will do anything to get into the team. Fellas like Conor Boyle would feel that they should be on the team, Jack Fennell is another one. That attitude keeps everyone going.”
What is amazing is how little the Portlaoise line-up has actually changed since that All-Ireland defeat against Lyons’ Ballina Stephenites. Ten, if not eleven, of the starters from that Portlaoise side will do likewise tomorrow.
It is a startling measure of consistency for any side in any sport and one which is serving them well at this level, but Portlaoise have done well to soldier on so successfully without the few who have departed in the intervening years.
Among them were Ian Fitzgerald, who captained Laois to the Leinster title in 2003, Colm Parkinson, who was the county’s most recognisable player of the decade, and Martin Delaney, once the best underage player in the country.
“Those two or three lads who have gone were big players and they have done well to replace them,” said Conroy who is no longer manager. “Having so many lads from 2005 will be a big help too.”
Facing them tomorrow will be Garrycastle who are lining up at this stage of the competition for the first time. If the history books are against them, then so too are the odds but belief will hardly be an issue for the underdogs.
Westmeath sides have held the Indian sign over their Laois rivals for the last 15 years, ever since the Lake County came out on top after a three-game duel in the 1995 provincial minor final. That success translated through into U21 and senior meetings between the county sides over the next ten years with the most famous being Westmeath’s win in the Leinster senior decider in 2004 after a replay.
Even the only league meeting between the counties in the noughties went the way of Westmeath so it is no surprise to find out that Garrycastle won the one and only competitive meetings between these two back in 2002.
It is a game lost in the sands of time. Fennelly can barely remember the year. He thinks it may have been pouring rain but doesn’t sound like a man who would wager his house on any of it. He was one of nine Portlaoise players involved tomorrow who was there that day but it will be memories of Ballina in 2005 and not Garrycastle in 2002 that they will be hoping to put to bed this weekend.
