Feast Meets Famine As Ballyroan And Portlaoise Lock Horns In Laois

One is a dynastic force of Laois football the other is 15-years without a semi-final appearance.

They say opposites attract and that fact must be true as Ballyroan Abbey and Portlaoise bid to reach the Laois Senior Football Championship final. 

Portlaoise missed out on their first final in fourteen years in 2020 and they won twelve of thirteen in the run up to that. Contrastingly Ballyroan Abbey are in their first semi-final since the won a county title as Ballyroan Gaels in 2006 and you have to go back to 1992 to find another successful outing at senior level for the parish. 

Pedigree can mean a lot but results would dictate that some of the air of invincibility has been removed from Portlaoise in 2021. 

They lost the opening day to Courtwood before coming through the losers bracket and make it through a gruelling extra-time game with O'Dempsey's last time out to reach this stage. They will be battled hardened if nothing else. 

Ballyroan Abbey's young charges by contrast are three from three this season including a very impressive score they put up against Courtwood in the quarter-finals and come in with a bunch of forwards in form.

Their backgrounds couldn't be more different but you get the sense that neutrals in Laois smell an upset.

Eight different teams have contested the decider in Laois since 2015 so it is a county where teams get very hot and make an impact.

Can Ballyroan-Abbey be the latest to achieve that?

Their coach Padraig Clancy says they're looking forward to the challenge:

They're a very young side and as a group were always looking forward to trying to progress ourselves and were up against a very formidable side now in Portlaoise as everyone knows. 

I mean they're after winning 13-titles in 15-years. I don't buy into that vulnerability aspect at all, they haven't lost many semi-finals looking at those stats and Kevin will have them well drilled.

I know Kevin personally they may have their ups and downs like any teams but they're still in a semi final and they'll still be favourites going into this and rightly so because they've been there and done that and have done so for a number of years.

They've big players like Kieran Lillis, Conor Boyle and Paul Cahalane still ticking away there. Plenty of experience in that squad so there is. 

We play with 20 players not just 15 everyone works hard and our scorers shots have been going over the bar. Every game has been throwing up different challenges for us.

The Killeshin game was a different challenge that the St. Josephs game which was more defensive for north of us then the Courtwood game was a mix and we managed to burst out in the second half and end a sixteen year wait to get into a semi-final and the boys were delighted to do that and are excited to get on the field now and try and back it up. 

I've a great management team with me at the moment and we've out a plan in place and the boys have all bought into it and that is what you need at this level. 

They're training very well and they're well aware of coming up against a mountain at the weekend in Portlaoise but that's the challenge for us. 

This whole group, the parish and community are all massively looking forward to this game.

The form of Portlaoise is the talk of many people outside the club as they look to rebuild following a sustained period of success.

Their boss Kevin Fitzpatrick is happy to come into the game under the radar:

You'd hope being pushed in every game will stand to us. We've battled through. I don't enjoy them on the sideline when they're like that but it just shows there's great heart in this team and they never give up, you cannot fault them in respect of that.

They've been behind in the last fifteen minutes of every game and come out on the right side of them. It's the sign of the good squad. Each and everyone has put their head down and got through that grind.

We've made changes every game, it's been a different fifteen starting and finishing. 

There's a lot of young lads being integrated into the team. I think eight have made their senior championship debuts and they've all stood up at various points over the year in fairness. 

We've lost fifteen players over the last three years for different reasons (retirements, moving abroad, work) of which ten have played senior inter county football.

They were big, big influences in the dressing room and the culture so to lose those in that short space of time isn't easy on any club.

We've brought in ten lads over the last two years who are just starting out at senior football and it isn't going to click straight away but we're still here thank god. 

Everyone wants to beat us because we been up there for so long and you always want to take down the top dog when you get the chance.

Some teams have done it last year and this year and new lads are trying to gel with us and our style of play, play with the likes of Kieran Lillis, Conor Boyle and Paul Cahalane and eventually they'll just have to live with the target on their back and get on with it.

Hopefully this year has been a learning curve for a lot of them and they see what it takes to win championship games and we've done that the last three times out. 

You'd hope the lads I've just mentioned who have been in fifteen sixteen semi-finals in the last eighteen years and will know what it takes over 60-minutes to win a championship semi. 

Ballyroan Abbey are a very good side, a fit side. They've a good manager involved with them who has good experience over the last five or six years in Laois club football.

They've won everything underage coming up and it gives you the confidence stepping up to senior football that you can win more.

It's definitely a massive proposition and for that reason they probably go into this one as favourites.

They haven't had trouble getting through their games whereas we have struggled in each of ours and they've beaten some of our underage teams during the last four or five years as well so that's where we are with it.