All-Ireland SFC Round four qualifiers, Laois v Offaly - The classic rivalry:  Ian O'Riordan on the intense local pride at stake when the Offaly and Laois footballers meet

Rival n & a [ L rivalis orig. 'a person using the same stream as another'] 1 A person competing for the same objective as another; a person striving to equal or outdo another. 2 A person or thing which is arguably equal in quality or distinction to another. 3 Players from either county in an Offaly versus Laois football championship encounter.

So that last part was made up, but when it comes to the football championship, Laois have no greater rivals than Offaly, and Offaly have no greater rivals than Laois. They've never ceased being rivals, like political parties, like cats and dogs. It's intensely parochial, and worse than any sibling rivalry.

It's obvious why: whenever they face off in the early summer neither side can be totally confident of victory, and the one thing they're surely equal in is their desire to beat the other. When one loses to the other it feels like an ambushing by a rival gang.

Their rivalry has always been memorable, even when they were locked in one of those "classic defensive struggles". And even if there are more famous rivalries in the football championship, none are more passionate, none boil so vigorously.

All of that still doesn't over-state the case for tomorrow's fourth round qualifier in Portlaoise - their first summer meeting outside of the Leinster championship.

Past rivalries don't always count on the day but the history between Offaly and Laois is so extensive and so fresh it has to be a factor. The players that take to the pitch tomorrow will come loaded with rivalry so fresh they can smell it, and recognise it like they will each other's aftershave.

Their previous two championship meetings alone are still clear in the memory. In last year's quarter-final, Laois effectively robbed their rivals of the victory when Ross Munnelly scrambled the ball into the Offaly net in injury-time.

At the same stage in 2003, Laois again saved themselves with a late goal from Michael Lawlor that helped force a replay, which they duly won.

And on the sidelines tomorrow the rivalry also runs deep. Offaly manager Kevin Kilmurray played centre forward on the team that beat Laois in the 1971 Leinster semi-final, one of their typically close and personal contests.

A year later, Kilmurray helped Offaly win the All-Ireland final against Kerry, whose team included a certain Mick O'Dwyer - now the Laois manager. And in 1981, current Laois selector Declan O'Loughlin played at corner forward on the team that lost to Offaly in the Leinster final - and he'll tell you himself that one still hurts.

The long story of the Offaly- Laois rivalry probably peaked in the decade that followed the 1971 semi-final. They drew in the 1975 quarter-final, with Offaly winning the replay, and Laois endured successive defeats in 1978, 1979 and 1981. Then came the game that would ensure their rivalry lasted forever - the 1982 Leinster semi-final, played in Tullamore.

It was the game that at the time helped make Offaly and break Laois. Most of the players that emerged from that Offaly victory are now legends of Gaelic football, not least of all Matt Connor, along with his brother Richie, the likes of Seán and Mick Lowry, and of course Séamus Darby.

But they mightn't have been so famous had they not beaten Laois that day in Tullamore, and when Connor thinks back he's inclined to agree.

"I still think 1982 was the biggest game I was ever involved with against Laois," he says. "I know Laois still think they should have beaten us here in Tullamore. And they probably should have beaten us.

"We made a huge comeback towards the end (with a late goal from John Guinan) and managed to win it, but I'll always remember that as a very, very close game, and that we were very lucky to come out of it.

"If you go back to that time of the late 1970s we both had very good players and very good teams. I think we were just a year or two ahead of them, and had that extra bit of experience, and I think that told a lot when it came to the closer games.

"And definitely in that match in 1982. We had been in the All-Ireland final the year before, and had won the Leinster title, so we were just able to dig it out in the end, even though Laois were every bit as good as us.

"I think if it had been the other way around, and Laois had been in an All-Ireland final before, then we would have found it very hard, and I expect Laois would have been the ones escaping.

"Anyway, we went on to win the All-Ireland that year, and over the years that rivalry has definitely held up, and I think it's as intense now as it ever was."

The fact that Offaly have won three All-Irelands and Laois have won none is just one of the things that makes their rivalry so enduring. Most of it is based on the proximity of football pockets in the neighbouring counties, as Connor explains.

Though he now lives and works in Tullamore, Connor was born right next to the Laois border, went to school in Portarlington, and played all his club football just back over the border in Walsh Island.

"I had all of that in my background. So it was always very intense for me personally, and always very much a part of any game with Laois. Whereas the likes of Tubber and Clara wouldn't feel it as much, being closer to Westmeath.

"But for most of the players there would be a very intense rivalry, just maybe less so for some of the players from other parts of the county.

"The other thing, of course, is that while the rivalry with Laois was always there, going back, at that time we also had a big rivalry going with Dublin, who we seemed to be playing all the time. The difference, though, was the rivalry with Laois was always there at every level and every grade."

It's hardly recalled much now, yet the fact that Offaly beat Laois in the Leinster semi-final of 1982, before beating Dublin in the final, made their subsequent All-Ireland final win over Kerry taste all the more sweeter.

There's no such thing as the perfect summer in Offaly football unless they've beaten Laois at some point along the way.

"Well, yeah," adds Connor. "I mean personally for me, living on the border and that, there was no team I preferred beating more than Laois. But at the same time, once they beat us, I would actually support them.

"That was the funny thing. You'd always enjoy beating them, but then you'd support them, if they ended up beating you. I think that proves we have good admiration for each other as well as the fierce rivalry.

"And I don't think you ever really enjoy championship games that involve your big rivals. There's a lot more pressure on you, and the only enjoyable part is when you're looking back after a win. But once you're playing you don't enjoy them at all.

"And I suppose because we had no real difference in style or anything like that meant you always knew it was going to be a close battle."

If there is such a thing as gaining an edge as far as their rivalry goes then Laois have probably gained it in recent years.

Their victory in 2003 helped set up their first Leinster title since 1946, thanks largely to O'Dwyer's inspiration as manager.

Yet both teams have had their managerial problems in the past, Laois perhaps more so. Before O'Dwyer they had appointed and gotten rid of 11 managers in the previous 20 years, and the rumblings involved with that didn't help their cause.

Although Connor was involved in the Offaly management in 2004, as a selector with Gerry Fahy, he never got to taste the rivalry from the sidelines as that was the one year in the last six that they didn't meet Laois. Yet he knows exactly where it lies today.

"Well over the last four or five years maybe Laois have had a slightly better team than Offaly, but then we've beaten them twice in recent years as well, in 2002 and 2001.

"So that makes it two wins each and one draw since 2000. So maybe this one will decide who is the better team in this decade. The fact that they've won the last two meetings maybe makes them the slightly stronger team at the moment, but Offaly have won twice before that, which shows there is still very little between us."

Connor, however, is slow to make comparisons with his era: "I don't think it makes that much difference. I know the Offaly supporters still talk about it, but I don't think it matters one bit to any of the players on these teams. They have their own eras now and their own rivalries.

"They only have to think about last year. Laois managed to win it but Offaly will know they were the best team for most of the game.

"And that goes back to what I was saying earlier, and this time maybe Laois have the extra bit of experience. That experience Laois got from winning Leinster a few years back stood to them last year, and won it for them in the end."

Maybe it is pushing it to expect the past to influence the present, but not when it comes to Offaly against Laois. Old rivalries like these are still too clearly defined not to make a difference in the end.

Leinster championship meetings: 27.

Offaly wins: 10. Laois wins: 13. Draws: 4.

Qualifier meetings: 1 (Tomorrow)

1903 - Quarter-final: Laois 1-5, Offaly 0-2

1917 - First round: Laois 2-7, Offaly0-0

1936 - Semi-final: Laois 4-5, Offaly 3-4

1937 - Quarter-final: Laois 1-9, Offaly 2-6

- Replay: Laois 2-7, Offaly 1-7

1940 - Semi-final: Laois 2-7, Offaly 0-7

1942 - Quarter-final: Offaly 6-5, Laois 2-7

1946 - Quarter-final: Laois 1-7, Offaly 1-5

1947 - Semi-final: Laois 5-11, Offaly 0-4

1958 - First round: Offaly 7-8; Laois 3-5

1959 - Quarter final: Laois 2-6; Offaly 1-9

- Replay: Laois 3-8; Offaly 0-10

1963 - Semi-final: Laois 2-7, Offaly 0-9

1968 - Semi-final: Laois 0-11, Offaly 0-6

1971 - Semi-final: Offaly 2-12; Laois 0-10

1975 - Quarter-final: Offaly 0-13, Laois 0-13

- Replay: Offaly 3-14, Laois 3-7

1978 - Quarter-final: Offaly 0-16, Laois 2-8

1979 - Quarter-final: Offaly 1-12, Laois 0-13

1981 - Final: Offaly 1-18, Laois 3-9

1982 - Semi-final: Offaly 3-13, Laois 1-15

1990 - Quarter-final: Laois 3-15, Offaly 3-5

2001 - Quarter-final: Offaly 1-13, Laois 0-12

2002 - Quarter-final: Offaly 0-13, Laois 2-6

2003 - Quarter-final: Laois 1-12, Offaly 1-12

- Replay: Laois 2-10, Offaly 0-13

2005 - Quarter-final: Laois 1-10, Offaly 1-8