Laois bid for another miracle

Last Saturday, Billy Sheehan strode out of the Laois dressing room in Wexford Park, a beaming smile across his bearded face, and implored one journalist to keep writing Laois off.

It was a scene that bore a striking resemblance to one five years earlier when the Kerry native said much the same to a group of reporters in O’Moore Park as he departed the field having played a crucial role in his adopted county’s defeat of Tyrone in that year’s qualifiers.

That remains to this day the one and only time in the dozen years since the new system was introduced that any reigning All-Ireland champions lost their bearings whilst detouring through the back door.