After 111-year wait, Laois hope for home help against Dublin

Billy Sheehan knows every bump and crest on the road from Dublin to Portlaoise at this stage.

He’s almost two decades ensconced in the capital, a son of Tralee whose association with Laois endures from when he answered Mick O’Dwyer’s call in late 2004 and transferred to Emo.

It was an era when Laois-Dublin championship games sold out Croke Park. Sheehan was in the crackle of the fire when they contested raucous Leinster finals in 2005 and 2007, those untamed days of Mark Vaughan’s bleached hair and Beano McDonald’s effervescent brilliance. Good times. Different times.

Sheehan will manage Laois against Dublin in a Leinster quarter-final on Sunday. Nobody outside the Laois dressingroom gives them a sniff.

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“Whether you are a 10-year-old kid or a fella in your thirties, you go out to try win every game, nothing changes just because it’s Dublin,” says Sheehan.

It’s a Dublin team he knows well, for he has been consuming the GAA scene in the capital for years now. Tom Lahiff is a clubmate at St Jude’s, the southside outfit Sheehan joined in Dublin and with whom his kids now play.

“Tom has been a revelation in the role he is playing this year. Dessie Farrell has done a superb job transitioning players through,” says Sheehan, who won a Dublin SFC with UCD in 2006. “They are a top-two team, but we will be ready to go.”

Still, there is bigger-picture stuff beyond both counties’ flagship teams.

Sheehan, a teacher by profession, has three boys – 11, eight and six – who, like many kids, are involved in an abundance of activities from GAA to rugby to soccer and everything in between. His eldest, Timmy, played for Shamrock Rovers in a tournament involving Benfica in Poland recently.

“Rovers don’t discourage kids from playing other sports at all,” he says. “They encourage it to develop different skills, they’re a really great club.”

But so too are St Jude’s. the Templeogue outfit have a flourishing underage system.

“Sheer numbers is the big difference between Dublin and a county like Laois,” says Sheehan. “My own young fella plays under-8s and they have 70 or 80 players.

“The organisational work the club do is absolutely amazing, Kilmacud and Ballyboden have the same amount of teams.

“The amount of GDAs, I’d say there would be more between Kilmacud, Ballyboden and Na Fianna than the whole of Laois. But Laois are trying to rectify that, they are working to get in the schools and are putting a huge emphasis on development squads.”

Sheehan played with Laois from 2005 to 2015, and subsequently had spells coaching with Cork and Offaly, and in late 2021 he was appointed manager of the O’Moore County. His appointment was reported widely as him becoming the county’s latest Kerry manager rather than a former Laois footballer returning to take charge.

Two weeks ago, with the Wexford game still in the mix, Sheehan heard familiar barbs rolling down from the stand, telling him to “go back to Kerry.”

“I laugh at it because it was fairly continuous when I was playing as well, but I never let it bother me.

“I’m originally from Kerry and fully proud of that, that’s just the way you are looked at if you are not born and bred in the county. There are no issues on my part. I remember when Vinnie Murphy was down playing with Strand Road against Austin Stacks, we were probably calling him a Dublin whatever, so you can’t be talking out of both sides of your mouth. But it does still happen, yeah.”

Over the last two years there has been quite a turnover in the Laois squad with experienced players such as Colm Begley, Ross Munnelly, Gary Walsh, John O’Loughlin and Gareth Dillon stepping away. From the team that lined out in last year’s championship loss to Wicklow, only seven started against Wexford. And 11 of that panel were under 22.

Still, failure to achieve promotion from Division Four was disappointing for the group.

“The boys did exactly as they were told, it’s the management that needs to look at themselves when the team doesn’t get over the line in tight games like those in the league. I would take full ownership of that.”

When Dublin arrive in Portlaoise on Sunday, it will be the first time the counties have contested a championship game on Laois soil since 1912.

“That is what my teammates were always looking for when we were playing, a game in Portlaoise against Dublin. We always had to go to Croke Park. It’s great for the county and hopefully home advantage can count.”

But whatever way it spins out, it’s just football. Shortly before throw-in for the Wexford game at O’Moore Park on Easter Sunday, word reached the Laois management that David Brown, 15-year-old brother of Conor, the team’s sub goalkeeper, had died in a quad bike incident.

“That is more important to us as a group than playing Dublin, far more important,” says Sheehan. “What that family went through was heart-breaking to see.

“Did it really mean the world for us to beat Wexford? It didn’t, in the context it didn’t mean anything at all, what meant more to us was that Conor, his sister and his parents were okay.

“Because, as a dad, you win games, you lose games, but the most important thing is you can go home to your family afterwards.”