Lack of quality haunts Armagh as Laois hold on to survive late scare
MANAGER Mick Lillis admitted he wasn’t sure how his Laois team would react to being dumped out of the Leinster Championship by Dublin.
The response wasn’t exactly emphatic in Portlaoise, and even Lillis himself admitted the performance ‘wasn’t pretty’, but it was damn effective as they fought hard to keep their Championship challenge alive.
Conor Meredith’s first-half wonder goal ultimately separated the sides as Armagh’s woeful season came to an end.
But it was a nervous finale for Laois, who led by just one entering injury-time and had to dig deep to progress to Round 2A of the qualifiers.
Late, late scores from substitutes Jamie Farrell and veteran Ross Munnelly sealed a slightly flattering three-point victory.
Laois will take their place in tomorrow morning’s draw for Round 2A and Lillis was beaming, pointing out that progression was paramount to avoid a disastrous early Championship exit.
‘After losing to Dublin, despite all the talk that we had a decent second-half, the bottom line was we were blown out of the water in the first 15 minutes and we didn’t know what kind of a response we were going to get from that,’ said Lillis.
‘So it was great that the lads dug in. Okay, it wasn’t pretty at times. It was a tough, tough Championship match but you’d always expect that when you play Armagh so to come through like that at the end of the day is just very reassuring.’
It’s the end of the line for Armagh and boss Kieran McGeeney after a wretched six months or so.
The Orchard suffered relegation to Division 3 of the Allianz League alongside Laois during spring.
And the 2002 All-Ireland champions lost both their Championship games to Cavan and now Laois.
They led early on but fell behind after Meredith’s goal and never got on top of Laois again.
Stefan Campbell showed glimpses of excellence in the first-half though Armagh’s inability to split the posts ultimately cost them.
They hit just six points from play in the 70 minutes though it was a defensive game with Laois getting 13 men behind the ball at times.
‘Where did it go wrong? The same place as it’s gone wrong for us plenty of times before — 31 shots, 10 scores,’ said McGeeney.
‘We had the chances, goal chances as well and loads of point chances. You have to be able to convert them and we didn’t. That’s probably the bottom line.’
The former All-Ireland winning skipper admitted it could be a difficult few weeks ahead in Armagh.
‘In the week or two after the Championship, we’ll have a lot of people telling us what we should and shouldn’t do,’ McGeeney added.
‘That’s just part and parcel of it. The players will have to take it on the chin and get back and play with their clubs and refocus again.’
Laois led 1-2 to 0-3 after Meredith’s goal when he beat Ciaran McKeever for pace and fired a bullet shot from the left.
But it was an error strewn, edgy encounter and it was no surprise that they were level at half-time, 1-4 to 0-7.
Laois points from top scorer Donie Kingston and David Conway put them three clear in the third quarter.
But stubborn Armagh twice reduced their arrears to two points before leaving just one in it after a Joe Feeney score.
It remained that way for ten minutes until those injury-time Laois scores from Farrell and Munnelly.