Young and hungry Larries side in positive mood ahead of Senior Championship

After coming out the right side of a heated battle with Ballyteague to maintain their senior status last year, St Laurence's are hoping to be looking upwards in the Senior Football Championship this time around. Despite their Division 2 final defeat to Allenwood, Larries were promoted to the top tier and a huge item was checked off the list of new manager Pat Ryan.

St Laurence's captain Kevin Eustace said, “The league was positive. We got a good few nice results and helped our score difference along the way with some big wins. We were caught on the hop once or twice, but that is to be expected throughout the league when you are missing players and have lads on holidays. We have great lads there and the boys dug deep and gave it everything.”

It was far from straight out of the blocks for St Laurence's who won just one of their opening four games in Division 2, but responded superbly to finish second.

“We were missing a couple of bodies for those early games, but then we had lads that came back from Australia and we had Oisin Grufferty back from the U20s, which was a huge boost. It was a slow first three or four weeks, we were building and getting used to the new management and the new way of playing, but the lads found their feet fairly quickly,” Eustace said.

The big change of course for St Laurence's this year is the aforementioned introduction of new manager Pat Ryan. The Portlaoise man will be hoping that he can bring this young side to the next level.

Eustace explained, “There is a different feeling around training, there is a positive vibe now. It is especially a change after last year and being in a relegation final, training is intense and you are pushed to your limits. We are now hitting on the aspects of training where our downfall has been. Our manager is very good at identifying what you need to improve on and putting you to work on that straight away.

“It is going to be a massive step up from Division 2 into the Senior Championship, our training intensity has nearly doubled.”
The Larries face Clogherinkoe on Saturday in the Joe Mallon Motors Senior Football Championship Preliminary Round. There has been little to separate the teams in recent meetings and there is evidence of that as recently as June 8 when they drew 1-9 apiece in the last round of the league.

“We were playing Clogherinkoe last year in the first round and it was a very tight game, then in the last round of the league it was more the same. They are a big, strong physical team and well able to play football too. We got a draw out of them in the league to get us promoted, which was massive. As well as a huge boost for our lads to be coming up against them knowing that we can get a result. We pushed and pushed last time and hopefully this time we will get a win over them,” Eustace said.

A young team and a great start to the year, St Laurence's are already in top form heading into their SFC opener and their captain is excited about the prospect of what is to come.

He concluded, “We are hoping to go out in that first round and get a result against Clogherinkoe. Once you get that first win you are safe for the year and it is open season to see who you get then. If you get into that winners' group, you can then drive on and express yourself. Especially a young team like ours, we won’t be afraid to go at any team and take on whatever challenge we have head first.”