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Hurling

hurling

Whelan hopes Laois can make further progress

Experienced Laois hurler Matthew Whelan is looking forward to the upcoming Joe McDonagh Cup Final.

Experienced Laois hurler Matthew Whelan is looking forward to the upcoming Joe McDonagh Cup Final.

By Kevin Egan

Barring an unlikely combination of results Westmeath’s contest against Laois will be nothing more than an appetiser for the serious business of a rematch in the Joe McDonagh cup final in a fortnight.

Three wins from three games has secured a place for Laois in the decider, while Westmeath would have to lose by over 20 points (or lose their game and see Kerry beat Offaly by a huge margin) to see their place snatched from their grasp.

Still, even in the absence of any tangible reward for either team, Laois full back Matthew Whelan expects a full-blooded contest, as he doesn’t want to hand Westmeath any psychological edge ahead of their Croke Park showdown.

“From my point of view, a Championship match is a Championship match and you’d be treating the same as you would have been treating every other game that we’ve been playing the last couple of weeks,” he said this week.

“Yeah the maths and all that will work out that it’s going to be ourselves and Westmeath in the final. But we’ve built up good momentum from winning the past couple of games and coming out of the League so it’d be nice to keep that momentum going, going into a final.

“You do come across it sometimes in club championships so it’s not a totally new feeling. Sometimes you could have a dead rubber of a game at the end, but lads still take it seriously. There’s always going to be players pushing for a space on the team and lads trying to hold onto a position if they are in a position to be playing a match.”

On the face of it, the 2019 season has seen Laois hit pretty much every meaningful target. They took three points from their two games against Offaly and Carlow in the League which was enough to secure a place in the quarter-finals, not to mention securing their top flight status for 2020.

They found All-Ireland champions Limerick too hot to handle in the quarter-final, but came into that game on the basis of playing well for long stretches of their games against Waterford and Galway, not to mention leading Dublin up until the 65th minute of their final round clash in Parnell Park.

That form was carried over into the Joe McDonagh Cup, where away wins in Tullamore and Tralee, either side of a solid home performance against Antrim, have taken the pressure off the side for Saturday’s fixture.

Whelan still wants to see further progress, fully aware that a knockout clash against a Liam MacCarthy cup side has also been secured. “We’re always looking for progression,” the Borris-in-Ossory man admits.

“We’re not where we want to be yet. We’re a developing team and there’s a lot to work on. It’s a credit to the lads that are doing all the work between management and players. The players especially are open to the challenges that the management have put to us and how they want to implement their style of hurling.”

Laois' Matthew Whelan in Allianz Hurling League Division 1B action against Dublin's John Hetherton.

Laois' Matthew Whelan in Allianz Hurling League Division 1B action against Dublin's John Hetherton.

The topic of hurling styles can be a thorny one these days as traditionalists rail against the gradual decline of old-fashioned man-on-man hurling, but even though Whelan cuts an imposing figure and would relish taking on an opponent in a succession of physical battles for 50/50 ball, he accepts that hurling has moved on.

Under Seamus Plunkett, Laois were one of the first sides to start developing a possession-based game, and he’s happy that Eddie Brennan and his selectors have continued to stress the importance of using the sliothar wisely, as part of an overall game plan.

“The men that are over us now at the moment are new enough to intercounty and they have fresh ideas.

“But from their own time from playing with their own counties, with Niall (Corcoran) with Dublin, Eddie with Kilkenny and Tommy (Fitzgerald) here in Laois, they all have their own unique thoughts. They’ve experienced the game at a high level and they’re bringing their own methods to it and trying to perfect it as they go along.

“Like every team nowadays we’re trying to use possession a lot more. Everyone is looking not to hit aimless ball into the forwards anymore, it’s about trying to set-up a platform more against teams, especially when they are attacking. When you compare yourself against the likes of Limerick and Waterford in recent years, maybe not this year, they’re all using possession a lot more intently. Teams don’t aimlessly hit the ball up the field. It’s about copying a little bit from gaelic football now and playing more of a percentages game.

“You go back to the old traditions of hurling, the competitive spirit of it, the tackling and the accountability of forwards putting pressure on backs and clearing the ball, that’s all still very much part of it, and we’ve been left under no illusion that every man still has to take responsibility for their own direct opponent and their own duties. It’s just that the game’s evolving more now.

“It requires more from players than ever to be comfortable on the ball and not puck the ball aimlessly down the field and giving 50/50 balls in on top of your forwards”.

Historically, Laois hurling was built around a more competitive, traditional approach. Whelan would have grown up hearing of the exploits of some real legends of the game, men like Pat Critchley and PJ Cuddy, who backboned some superb Laois teams. Different times now, and Whelan feels that this current Laois group is built to play a different way.

“We would have grown up with teams from the 80’s and hearing about how physical their style of play was,” Whelan states.

“But when you look at the physical makeup of those players, they were hugely imposing players at that time. But when you compare that to the team we have today, ours is more speed-based. Now, we still have good size players, but I would count it as a very fast team and very mobile. They’re well able to get around the field. That’s what suits us now, and it’s been working well so far.

“And regardless of how little it might matter in terms of qualification for a final, I really want us to keep that going against Westmeath in Portlaoise and that we go to Croke Park on the back of four wins in a row.”