Off-Broadway but no little drama in Laois and Carlow draw

Carlow’s Daragh Foley celebrates with his mother Bernie and daughter Isla. Pic: INPHO/James Lawlor

Laois 2-17 Carlow 2-17 

There was no angst over the absence of Laois-Carlow from our screens on Sunday, no mention of GAAGO or paywalls. The Top Square on Portlaoise’s Main Street, for so long a pre-match staple, was devoid of fans enjoying their pints and the summer sun.

These two teams hadn’t even been the biggest news inside their own borders with the Carlow hurlers claiming a shock draw with Kilkenny in the Leinster Championship and Willie Hyland’s Laois well-positioned to make the All-Ireland series via the Joe McDonagh Cup.

If Kildare took stick for hosting Saturday’s game with Longford at their cosy Hawkfield training ground then it may well have catered for the crowd here too. Parking spaces within kicking distance of the Town End were not a problem.

This is the Tailteann Cup, Championship-Lite.

It makes for an acquired taste, at least in the early rounds when the prospect of a big day in Croke Park is still at a distance, but if the weekend just gone showed us anything then it is in how the national games continue to mix the magical with the unexpected.

Saturday gave us the London footballers walloping Offaly, Cork rebelling against Limerick’s All-Ireland champions and the Carlow hurlers stampeding to that late draw against Kilkenny in Leinster. Then Niall Carew’s footballers went and did much the same in Portlaoise.

It was an odd quirk of a game. Laois led by eight points in the first-half, and by nine with eight minutes to go, but they had lived dangerously. Carlow, who hadn’t beaten their neighbours in championship since 1988, failed to take maybe half-a-dozen goal chances.

For over an hour this game was no more than a footnote.

Carlow did well enough in just keeping the thing any way alive, mostly through unerringly accurate dead balls from midfielder Conor Doyle. Then they got a goal, and then another, the second of them with the last kick of the game.

They may be off-Broadway but Carlow put on two cracking shows at the weekend.

“It’s probably not getting the press it deserves,” said manager Niall Carew. “Carlow is such a small county club-wise, the playing base is so small and the numbers of players is so tight that you don’t have the luxuries of the Meaths or Kildares.

“It’s the playing population where Carlow struggle. I know that from trying to get lads up to a level. Carlow haven’t won a game at minor or U20 in seven or eight years so getting lads up to speed when they come in can take two or three years.

“You are always playing catch-up but they hung in today and it is days like this that you do it for. We want to get to another stage again. We have got to two [Tailteann Cup] quarter-finals and we would like to get to a semi-final at least.” 

Aaron Amond had already claimed their first goal with a minute of normal time to go. A brother of current Waterford striker Padraig, he secured the draw with a nerveless penalty in the last of the four minutes added on.

“How cool was Aaron Amond slotting that in? I think the wrong lad was playing professional soccer,” Carew joked.

No-one on the Laois side saw the funny side in any of it. Promoted from Division 4 of the NFL, they bombed in Leinster against Offaly and this latest blow-up leaves them with plenty to consider ahead of their next Group 3 game against Wicklow.

In fairness to manager Justin McNulty, he didn’t hesitate to hold his hand up for the premature exits of captain Evan O’Carroll and the excellent Mark Barry with nine minutes to go. His side was leading by eight points and it proved to be a critical turning point.

“The game is never over until the final whistle and I take responsibility for it. Maybe by the substitutions that we made we sent the wrong message to the team, that the game was possibly over. We took our captain off and that was a big mistake on my part.

“At the same time when you are six or seven points up on the homeward stretch you have to close games out and we didn’t do that. Carlow punished us. They were threatening goals all day and we will have to do a deep dive into why that was happening.

“It bit us in the rear big time coming down the stretch.” 

Scorers for Laois: M Barry (1-6, 1-0 pen, 0-1 free); R Murphy (1-2); E O’Carroll (0-4, 0-2 frees); B Byrne, S Fingleton, C Heffernan, E Buggie and K Swayne (all 0-1).

Scorers for Carlow: A Amond (2-2, 1-0 pen); C Doyle (0-5, 0-4 ‘45’, 0-1 fee); D Foley (0-4 frees); C Crowley (0-2); M Bambrick, E Molloy C Lomax and P McDonnell, (all 0-1).

Laois: K Roche; D Kavanagh, E Buggie, M Timmons; S Lacey, B Byrne, S Fingleton; M Dempsey, C Heffernan; M Barry, E Lowry, K Swayne; R Murphy, E O’Carroll, N Dunne.

Subs: P Kingston for Dunne (50); K Lillis for Dempsey (53); C Murphy for Barry and B Daly for O’Carroll (both 61); C Burke for Heffernan (65).

Carlow: J Furey; C Byrne, M Furey, E Molloy; M Bambrick, J Clarke, C Hulton; C Doyle, N Hickey; A Amond, P McDonnell, C Crowley; L Gavin, D Foley, C Lomax.

Subs: R Dunphy for Lomax (41); K Murphy for Gavin (44); S Buggy for Hulton (50); C Moran for Hickey (53); J Phiri for Clarke (59).

Referee: P Neilan (Roscommon).