Laois are capable of living with elite
Exciting League campaign is proof of O’Moore men’s credentials, says Phelan
THERE is a school of thought that says the Allianz Hurling League quarterfinals don’t belong in a compressed spring schedule – witness how the play-offs have been bumped from their original dates due to last weekend’s poor weather. However, it would be hard to find any paid-up members of that seat of learning in Laois.
Tonight, All-Ireland champions Limerick come to town in what the O’Moore County’s vice-captain Joe Phelan describes as ‘the biggest game I’ve played in Portlaoise for Laois’.
The TG4 cameras will be there to beam it out live. In charge of Laois is eight-time All-Ireland winner with Kilkenny, Eddie Brennan, who helped put paid to Limerick’s All-Ireland hopes back in the 2007 final. It adds another bit of spice to the mix.
For a county like Laois, the value of the quarter-finals where the fourth-placed team in Division 1B gets a crack at the top team in Division 1A, is estimable, even if it brings its own real pressures to justify the stage.
‘It’s massive,’ says Phelan. ‘It’s all everyone wants to talk about. There is a great buzz about the place. It has the whole place talking about hurling, it’s on TV as well, so it’s great publicity for the game here in Laois.
‘It’s definitely exciting. It’s a great way to test where we are right now. We’re after playing a few top teams — Galway, Waterford, Dublin — and we’ve acquitted ourselves fairly well. It’s just another challenge.
‘You want to test yourself against the best. It’s a chance of a big scalp in front of our home fans.’
In fact, the way he is looking at it, ‘it’s a free shot at one of the big guns, the All-Ireland champions’.
As for the prospect of Limerick doing a proper job on Laois and puncturing the balloon, Brennan’s side have yet to bow the knee to other establishment figures. Galway hit the 30-point mark between goals and points in a tough away tie in Pearse Stadium in round one, but Laois managed 2-15 themselves. The 4-22 conceded to Waterford in the next round was harder to take but it’s the results since that have pushed Laois into the play-offs — edging out Offaly, drawing with Carlow and then leading Dublin for the majority of last weekend’s game at Parnell Park before the dismissal of Charles Dwyer facilitated a late surge to victory by the hosts.
‘It was frustrating. Especially as we could have been out of sight at half-time. Their goalie made some excellent saves. We led from minute one – I think it was the 67th minute when they took the lead. We’ve been there a couple of times the last few years. We just can’t finish it out. Hopefully the next time we can, that we can learn from it.’
It’s been a long and winding road for 30-year-old Phelan who upped sticks to Australia in his mid-20s and settled in Queensland where Mackay’s name as a mining town attracts workers from all over. An Irish connection saw a group from Laois set up a hurling team with the support of the company they were working for, Shamrock Civil. And so Mackay Shamrocks was born.
‘We were miles away from anywhere. Five hours from Townsville, a long way from Brisbane as well. For any of the games we had to fly. We flew to Melbourne for the Melbourne Sevens and got to the final of that. Some teams flew up to us. Then we’d go off and have a party. So it was a fantastic time.
‘We trained on a local soccer pitch. We just made the most of what we had. It’s all about the social part of it.’
What brought him home? A familiar story. ‘A girl,’ he says, laughing. ‘All my friends were moving back as well around the same time. It felt like the right time to go.’
In terms of his county career, he came home a different man. ‘Looking back on it, the hunger comes. I wasn’t that pushed in my early 20s. I suppose when I came back I had a target to be the best I can be, with whatever part of my career that was left.’
It didn’t help this season’s preparations when the fall-out from an ugly incident in the Laois county final between Camross and Ross King’s Rathdowney-Errill, saw the county captain and star player hospitalised after getting teeth knocked and the player subsequently opting out of the county set-up. There’s probably good reason then that Phelan and Paddy Purcell of Rathdowney-
Errill have been named Laois vice-captain and captain respectively and the evidence of reaching the play-offs suggests a squad working for each other.
‘As soon as you walk in, you leave it all behind,’ says Phelan. ‘You get on with it. You’ve a job to do. You’ve to represent your county. There is no point in falling out with anyone. We’re all the one team. We want to push on together. That’s it.’
Looking further down the line, Phelan understands the importance of Laois winning the second tier Joe McDonagh Cup and earning the right to play in the Leinster round robin against the likes of Kilkenny next year.
‘We want to win the McDonagh Cup and get up and play in the All-Ireland series and the Leinster Championship. It was a blow that we were looked past. We’ll go all out to get back there.’
It’s 70 years since Laois appeared in the 1949 All-Ireland final, the last time, too, they won Leinster. Given Phelan can go to a mining town on the other side of the world and help to get a hurling team going, surely it is possible to expand the borders of the traditional elite counties to include one that touches Kilkenny, Offaly and Tipperary?
‘I think it can be done. It’s all about getting the underage right. The more people involved the better. Bringing along a bunch of players, year after year after year. It can be done. It’s hard on Laois at times. We don’t have as many hurling clubs as other areas but you just have to do the best you can. We think we’re at a high level, that we can compete against anyone. We want to be part of that All-Ireland Championship, for people to respect us.’
That’s why he says tonight ‘feels like a big game – it is a big game’.