’Cheddar’ confident impressive Laois can bridge the gap to big boys

Around his native Portlaoise he’s known only as ‘Cheddar’ but there is nothing cheesy about Seamus Plunkett, the man charged with turning around the hurling fortunes of his native Laois.

Even before yesterday’s superb showing against champions Galway in the Leinster semi-final he and his backroom staff had already begun the transformation of a team and a county that had foundered badly in recent years.

In the Allianz Hurling League Laois won promotion to Division 1B, and in this championship they had won two rounds, albeit against opposition – Antrim and Carlow – that would hardly strike fear into the hearts of the big guns.

This was different though, this was Galway, one of the fancies for All-Ireland glory, and Laois were expected to be mere sacrificial lambs on the Westerners’ way to Croke Park and the defence of their Leinster title.

It didn’t pan out like that and we saw a hugely encouraging performance from a really well prepared Laois 15. Even more encouraging was the reaction of Plunkett to what many will already see as a moral victory for Laois.

“I’m not interested in moral victories or anything like that,” he declared. “I wouldn’t say what I have been saying about this county if I didn’t think we were going to win matches, that would be very loose and false talk and it would be the wrong talk to give to these players. They deserve more than that. We wanted to win the match, we set ourselves up to win the match but we didn’t want to be naïve and set ourselves up openly.”

Well, there’s no hiding after this, top-notch hurling from top-notch individuals in a top-notch team. Whoever Laois meet next, one of Tipperary/Cork/Clare, had better be ready to play. “I thought we made a couple of mistakes through the match, mistakes that cost us but that comes from inexperience. This is our first Tier One match in a couple of years. The pace and speed of hurling, prior to today we were trying to guess where that place was. Certainly after today we know where it is, we’re very confident we can live in this company, but I suppose what’s really important is what the team is going to do from now on. Do they really want to keep improving and keep working here? I believe they do. But that will only be told first of all in the next couple of weeks. After today I think people will believe there are enough technically gifted hurlers in Laois that can actually live in this company.

“I have no doubt there will be another day where we are going to get a beating somewhere along the way. We will get hopped off the ground but we will climb back up again. At some stage in the next year or two we will be a competitive team that can live with these teams. We know we made a couple of mistakes and we will go back and look at them but bear in mind, that kind of preparation, in terms of conditioning and that, it would take you two to three years to get to where you want to get to. We know we have a big gap to close here, we are not going to be blinded by the performance today.

“We have another match in a few weeks, it will be the same type of match, boot to the floor hurling. Our lads will really look forward to that and use that again in terms of learning.”