THE LAOIS FOOTBALLERS’ brief foray into Division 1 may come to a crashing halt in O’Moore Park this afternoon, but if it does, at least Justin McNulty feels that life among the big boys has steeled them for what he hopes will be a long and fruitful summer.
On paper, Laois’s two wins and four defeats hold no real reason for optimism. The only sides that they managed to take points off, Donegal and Armagh, also find themselves mired in a relegation dogfight this weekend, staring wistfully towards safety.
Results may be the only statistics that matter when it comes to divvying up the honours and the relegation places, but scorelines do not always reflect the 70-minute backstory. Laois’s performances, rather than the blunt realism of the league table, have given McNulty heart.
“We’ve been competitive in most games,” he explains to TheScore.ie. ”Bar the Cork game, you can say that we could’ve won each game.” It’s an interesting take on the campaign, even if fans of Mayo, Dublin and Kerry might choose to politely disagree.
“We’ve put ourselves in positions to win games, we just haven’t closed them out. Our ruthlessness needs to be honed,” McNulty continues.
I think the most encouraging fact for us as a management team is that the boys have been competitive against every team, bar maybe Cork where they got a run on us in the first half with several goals. We wouldn’t be happy about how we conceded them defensively, but the guys did fight back and they won the second half in that match.
Time and again, McNulty has said that the real measure of progress will come in the championship, an implicit recognition that Division 1 is unlikely to become the new status quo for Laois football.
The campaign begins against Longford in late May, and anything less than last year’s exit to Kildare in the second round of the qualifiers will be seen as a definite regression for a side seen by some as Leinster’s dark horses 12 months ago.
Even in defeat, the experience of playing against the country’s best footballers won’t be wasted.
For you as a player to know that you can go out and compete against someone who has an All-Ireland medal, that gives you confidence as an individual and confidence as a team. You learn so much about your own game when you’re competing against the very best. Hopefully it will stand to us in the big battles again.They seek out and find out the holes in your gameplan in terms of your strengths and weaknesses. They really find them out, and that’s good learning and development for us ahead of the championship.
If Division 1 has given the players confidence, it has also given McNulty confidence in his players, their ability and their mental strength.
“For the players to have had some of the defeats that they’ve experienced, and then go and still be hugely competitive, that’s a testament to the character of the players. That’s something that we can grow into and that will help us with the battles and the challenges ahead.”
The message is clear: even if this afternoon ends in a return to second-tier football, the past two months may well shape Laois’s season for the better.
“Division 2 is quite a competitive division as well, so it’s not the end of the world if we get relegated. The championship is where it’s at, and that’s where we’ll be measuring our developments this season.”
