Hon Cheddar a man with a grand plan 
, @myboyblue.
https://fbcdn-sphotos-c-a.akamaihd.net/hphotos-ak-prn1/v/t1.0-9/10177990_629371667151780_6303308821194325117_n.jpg?oh=3142178fcf519a5490da2dd915063b5b&oe=53C4D62F&gda=1405642388_222c7b6ead1071de31f47eccd70afa56
[QUOTE=“carryharry, post: 941322, member: 1517”]Hon Cheddar a man with a grand plan , @myboyblue.
https://fbcdn-sphotos-c-a.akamaihd.net/hphotos-ak-prn1/v/t1.0-9/10177990_629371667151780_6303308821194325117_n.jpg?oh=3142178fcf519a5490da2dd915063b5b&oe=53C4D62F&gda=1405642388_222c7b6ead1071de31f47eccd70afa56[/QUOTE]
You should have posted that in the roasters thread
[QUOTE=“carryharry, post: 941322, member: 1517”]Hon Cheddar a man with a grand plan , @myboyblue.
https://fbcdn-sphotos-c-a.akamaihd.net/hphotos-ak-prn1/v/t1.0-9/10177990_629371667151780_6303308821194325117_n.jpg?oh=3142178fcf519a5490da2dd915063b5b&oe=53C4D62F&gda=1405642388_222c7b6ead1071de31f47eccd70afa56[/QUOTE]
Yer man with the track suit top over the suit pants.
[QUOTE=“carryharry, post: 941322, member: 1517”]Hon Cheddar a man with a grand plan , @myboyblue.
https://fbcdn-sphotos-c-a.akamaihd.net/hphotos-ak-prn1/v/t1.0-9/10177990_629371667151780_6303308821194325117_n.jpg?oh=3142178fcf519a5490da2dd915063b5b&oe=53C4D62F&gda=1405642388_222c7b6ead1071de31f47eccd70afa56[/QUOTE]
Cheddar has had a number 1 in the Irish charts, case closed.
Hon Cheddar ya boya
[QUOTE=“carryharry, post: 941322, member: 1517”]Hon Cheddar a man with a grand plan , @myboyblue.
https://fbcdn-sphotos-c-a.akamaihd.net/hphotos-ak-prn1/v/t1.0-9/10177990_629371667151780_6303308821194325117_n.jpg?oh=3142178fcf519a5490da2dd915063b5b&oe=53C4D62F&gda=1405642388_222c7b6ead1071de31f47eccd70afa56[/QUOTE]
Stereotypical portrayal of each County there:
Kilkenny - Lives in the hurling tracksuit - “shur all we cares about is hurling”
Offaly - Alcoholic - “some waste of time coming up here for this shit”
Dublin - High flying business man - “need to wrap this up swiftly, I have 3 o clock in …”
Laois - Hobo, trying to be an alternative, ref. Colm Parkinson
[QUOTE=“Fran, post: 941560, member: 110”]Stereotypical portrayal of each County there:
Kilkenny - Lives in the hurling tracksuit - “shur all we cares about is hurling”
Offaly - Alcoholic - “some waste of time coming up here for this shit”
Dublin - High flying business man - “need to wrap this up swiftly, I have 3 o clock in …”
Laois - Hobo, trying to be an alternative, ref. Colm Parkinson[/QUOTE]
Not to mention the Kilkenny man is a Laois man
[QUOTE=“Fran, post: 941560, member: 110”]Stereotypical portrayal of each County there:
Kilkenny - Lives in the hurling tracksuit - “shur all we cares about is hurling”
Offaly - Alcoholic - “some waste of time coming up here for this shit”
Dublin - High flying business man - “need to wrap this up swiftly, I have 3 o clock in …”
Laois - Hobo, trying to be an alternative, ref. Colm Parkinson[/QUOTE]
Wexford - Not bothered showing up
[QUOTE=“Fran, post: 941560, member: 110”]Stereotypical portrayal of each County there:
Dublin - High flying business man - “need to wrap this up swiftly, I have 3 o clock in …”
[/QUOTE]
that’s former player shane martin …did you not used to train with crumlin for awhile or was that some other lad here?..was a lad from Waterford I think…
Shane martin is the one responsible for danny sutcliffes injury apparently. Wexford should be toasting him without sutcliffe dublins forward line is very average
Eh, we should have beaten a Dublin team that contained Sutcliffe last summer mate
I played with them for a couple of years Scumpot and he is indeed a high flying businessman as the photo suggests. Also a sound chap
What’s Sutcliffe’s injury?
Cheddar
[SIZE=6]O’Moore melody sweet in Plunkett’s revolution[/SIZE]
Friday, May 09, 2014
Last Sunday, the eyes of the hurling world were focused on Thurles, where more than 21,000 people, as well as a far greater live television audience on TG4, watched two of the aristocrats of the game battle it out in a brilliant Allianz League final.
I was always proud to be a Laois hurler and the Laois hurling support is always there. We were always a strong hurling county
Matthew Whelan
At around the same time in Mullingar, Laois opened their 2014 championship campaign with a drab 1-15 to 1-9 win over Westmeath in the re-formatted Leinster Championship Qualifier group in front of a tiny crowd in Cusack Park.
For Laois and their manager Séamus Plunkett, it was the first step on a road they hope will lead back to the main draw and a crack off Wexford or Galway on June 1. The Westmeath game was the first of four games on consecutive Sundays over a month-long period, and their next assignment is against Carlow on Sunday afternoon in Portlaoise.
Should Laois, as they are widely expected to, qualify from the group as one of the top two teams, they will be in championship action five weeks in a row, something Plunkett sees as bringing with it as many problems as benefits.
“As a player, that’s what you really want. Will that weaken our chances against Wexford or Galway? I am not for one minute thinking we will come there, but if we are lucky enough to come first or second in the group and we do play them, it’s going to be very difficult to do that.
“There is an U21 Leinster Championship game thrown in the middle of the week before – and I keep saying if we are lucky enough to get there.
“It’s going to be very, very tough and you are hoping to avoid injuries and all of that. It is what it is and we will use the games to build momentum if we can and try and win them. We have to win them first and that’s all we are concentrating on. We will worry about who we are playing if we get through them first.”
Laois’s stock has risen dramatically over the last year and a half under Plunkett, who has overseen something of a revolution in the O’Moore County since he took over at the end of 2012. When he did take the job, having initially been appointed as part of a sub-committee to find a successor to Teddy McCarthy, hurling in the county was at a low ebb.
Under Plunkett’s watch, Laois have risen again, promoted to Division IB of the Allianz League, where they held their own in this spring, before rattling All-Ireland champions Clare in the quarter-final of the competition.
“It was good preparation for the championship but I wouldn’t get too much drawn into that either because at the end of the day it’s April hurling,” Plunkett says of their performances so far this year.
“I have no doubt about it that Limerick, Cork and Clare will stick another 30 per cent performance on top of what they are doing. We are not blinded for one minute by our performances even though we were happy with the fighting performances the players gave – absolutely delighted with the players.
“We know that the targets really here are a good three or four points in some of those games, they were very tight, and there were 10-minute periods towards the end of some of the games where we could have won them.
“But we are not for a minute blinded by that – we know that we will drive on up the tracks as well in summer hurling and that gap might be seven or eight points by then. That’s the target we are aiming for and we have a good bit of improving to do.”
For team captain Matthew Whelan, the idea of competing with elite teams such as Cork, Limerick and Clare is all very new. In his seventh season with the senior team now, the 26-year-old has endured some very bad days with the county. In fact, he has lost games against all of their Leinster Qualifier opponents bar London in recent years – Carlow, Westmeath and Antrim.
“It’s in recent memory that they are well capable of beating us and they will know that they are well capable of beating us too, so we have to treat all these games with the greatest respect,” he says.
“Coming off the back of a strong League campaign - we were unlucky against Cork and we felt we left the Limerick game behind us – so we knew that if Limerick were playing Clare in that quarter-final they’d be preparing to try and beat them so our mindset was, ‘why not us?’
“We were disappointed that we didn’t beat Clare. We are trying to progress Laois forward and we see it as vital that we start beating these big teams now to prove a point now that we are very serious.
“You have to be ambitious. We don’t train this hard and play these matches to come off second best the whole time. We are in a group with Antrim, Carlow, Westmeath and London and we are seeing it as a chance to get up to where the other counties are.
“In the last year or two we have closed the gap and it has shown in our performances, but we know we have an awful lot of work left. Before we start talking about taking scalps, we have to get out of this group first.”
Plunkett has put everything in place now for Laois hurling to thrive, and Whelan attributes much of the success they have enjoyed to their inspirational manager, affectionately known as ‘Cheddar’, and his backroom team.
“It’s a fresh approach with a very professional set-up. We have very good trainers doing their jobs – a fitness trainer, good nutritionist, physios, every person we can have, and they are top quality,” Whelan adds.
“When players see that kind of set-up they want to buy into it. We were disappointed with the way we were representing the county the last few years and we felt we had a point to prove. We still feel we have a point to prove to the hurling people of Ireland. We’re putting it all in and I think it’s showing in our results.
“I was always proud to be a Laois hurler and the Laois hurling support is always there. We were always a strong hurling county, but I think the way we are training now, like the top counties because we might have been off preparation-wise in the past, you do start to compete and you do start to show you are able to stay with these teams.”
Even in the bad days - one particularly black day was then Laois were beaten by Cork by 10-20 to 1-13 in a Qualifier back in 2011 – Whelan never considered throwing in the towel.
“You’d always have hope. I grew up playing hurling in Laois all my life and I can see the potential that is in these lads and there’s still buckets more there because I think we haven’t reached our peak at all.
“I never considered packing it in because I know you only get a few years playing inter-county and I wanted to see it out until I am no longer good enough.”
Whelan may have retained hope even in the darkest days, but others had long lost faith. Plunkett, like his team captain, had an absolute conviction that Laois could restore some pride in the county for starters, and then break through the pack of mid-tier counties and take aim at the established forces.
One of his biggest jobs when he took over was to make the rest of the players believe that they were good enough to do just that.
“I always did believe it,” says Plunkett. “That’s not necessarily the reason I took on the job, but I always did believe it. I’d look at Laois players and individually they were as technically gifted as players anywhere else – in Kilkenny, Tipperary, Offaly or anywhere else. I believed that and I know that.
“Could we combine all of that to get confidence and self-belief in players? That’s part of my job, part of the management’s job as well as the training and all of that. That comes through an awful lot of hard work from good people being involved – the likes of Paul Cuddy, Damien Culleton (selectors), Ger Cunningham (technical coach), Pat Flanagan (strength and conditioning) and all the other people involved.
“Allied to that, it’s the commitment of the players to do all that work as well. When you have all those ingredients in the mix you have a great chance of going places. At the moment we still have to take down some of these teams and that’s certainly our target.
“I feel that if we keep working the way we are, and it may take a year or two because we have to be realistic about where we have come in the last year and a half, then you have a decent chance of getting some modicum of success as you go along.
“It’s very difficult. Look at the championship when it starts every year – there are 12 to 14 teams having a go at it. When you look at it that way you realise the scale of it and how difficult it is to make the breakthrough. That’s what we are facing. We are confident and enthused about the job ahead and we are going to give it a right good go.”
Clare beat Offaly today in a challenge 3-23 to 0-12. I don’t know any other details
Championship preview on RTE radio earlier. Despite the championship starting a fortnight ago.
When asked for predictions Sheedy went for Tipp, Loughnane went for Galway and Eddie Brennan went for Cork.
Nothing unusual there so.
Well done, that was the point of the post
[QUOTE=“dodgy-keeper, post: 943017, member: 1552”]Championship preview on RTE radio earlier. Despite the championship starting a fortnight ago.
When asked for predictions Sheedy went for Tipp, Loughnane went for Galway and Eddie Brennan went for Cork.[/QUOTE]
Galway???
Cork beat Dublin in a challenge match this evening.
The scallion aters are dispatched, with relative ease. Picky Maher outstanding again.
