Dublin ease to 27-point win over Laois to set up Kildare semi
GOAL: Colm Basquel of Dublin scores his side's second goal during the Leinster Championship quarter-final against Laois at Laois Hire O'Moore Park in Portlaoise, Laois. Pic: Brendan Moran/Sportsfile
Roadworks closed off the regular entry point for Dublin supporters arriving into Portlaoise on Sunday afternoon but their team’s destructive passage through the husk that is the Leinster Championship continued unchecked.
This was the first time since 1912 for Laois to host them in a Championship game in Portlaoise. It may be that their only hope next time it happens is to block off both the Junction 16 and the Junction 17 exits entirely.
And lock up the train station, too.
This could well have surpassed the 31-point trouncing Dublin handed out to Westmeath in the 2017 Leinster semi-final, when Jim Gavin’s version was in and around its peak. That it didn’t owed to a predictable easing up in the second-half.
Two Eoin Lowry goals in the space of a minute shortly after the break spared Laois some blushes in that sense but a 27-point gap on the Town End scoreboard – quickly erased on the final whistle – doesn’t leave much to the imagination.
For Dublin this was business as usual stuff in provincial terms. Mostly. The main happening of note from their end was the return to Championship action of Jack McCaffrey for the first time since 2019 and Paul Mannion since the 2020 campaign.
They will be hard beat.
Laois’ summer diverts now into the Tailteann Cup but it will be some act of will to resurrect their season on the back of an utterly mortifying defeat that almost made all the other mortifying defeats at Dublin’s hands seem bearable.
Dublin had beaten them nine times in a row in Championship football before this, the last Laois success coming 20 summers ago when Mick O’Dwyer’s side usurped them in a provincial semi-final and went on to raise the Bob O’Keeffe Cup.
A repeat looks decades away again.
Dublin’s biggest win against them before this was the 22-point annihilation last time out in 2022. They were 23 up by half-time here, goals from Con O’Callaghan, Colm Basquel, Lee Gannon and Ciaran Kilkenny tacked on to their 15 points in 35 minutes.
It will inevitably raise familiar questions about the lack of any challenge to Dessie Farrell’s men in the East but Laois were so profligate here that any of the country’s leading lights would have burned them in similar fashion long before the end.
Billy Sheehan’s side leaked scores in Division Four of the league this term, so much so that they couldn’t escape the basement level. They were always going to suffer this afternoon but who could have foreseen this?
They were utterly complicit in their own downfall. Their strategy of attacking with long, diagonal balls was evident throughout the spring and Dublin just ate that up with ease and invariably extended the punishment with scores at the far end.
Some of the attacking play from the home side was naïve to a shocking degree. Wing-back Padraig Kirwan summed it up with a crossfield free kicked with the outside of the boot that ended with Gannon unsettling the net seconds later.
Dublin responded to Lowry’s quick one-two with eight points on the trot and began drafting the likes of Dean Rock, Brian Howard and Cormac Costello onto the scene. They go on to face Kildare in the last four. No more of this, please.
C O’Callaghan (1-7, 0-2 marks, 0-1 free); C Basquel (1-5); C Kilkenny (1-4); B Fenton and D Rock (both 0-3); P Mannion (0-3, 0-1 free); L Gannon (1-0); R McGarry (0-2); S Bugler, B Howard, C Murphy (all 0-1).
E Lowry (2-1); P Kingston (0-3, 0-2 frees); M Timmons, P Kirwan and M Barry (all 0-1).
D O’Hanlon; C Murphy, D Byrne, D Newcombe; S Bugler, J McCaffrey, S McMahon; B Fenton, J McCarthy; L Gannon, C Basquel, C Kilkenny; P Mannion, C O’Callaghan, R McGarry.
B Howard for McCarthy (HT); E Murchan for McCaffrey (47); C Costello for O’Callaghan (55); D Rock for Mannion (58); C Dias for Fenton (63).
S Osborne; S Greene, T Collins, R Pigott; S O’Flynn, M Timmons, P Kirwan; K Lillis, D Larkin; K Swayne, P Kingston, P O’Sullivan; E Lowry, E O’Carroll, M Barry.
D Kavanagh for Green and S Lacey for Pigott (both HT); C Murphy for Barry (49); J Finn for Swayne (56); A Mohan for O’Flynn (64).
B Judge (Sligo).
CONNECT WITH US TODAY
Be the first to know the latest news and updates
