Laois' 2017 was a kind of horror story: they were relegated to Division 4, and while they had the fillip of a Championship victory over Longford and a a qualifier win over Wicklow, they exited the qualifiers with a heavy, ten-point defeat to Clare at the second round.
The recriminations have now begun, and the Leinster Express today have details of an explosive meeting between County Board delegates, as they picked through the carcass of the Laois season.
Manager Peter Creedon copped a lot of the flak - with one delegate openly calling for his term not to be renewed - but a couple of delegates also blamed the players for refusing to take some responsibility, and supposedly playing without passion.
Criticism wasn't all focused on such abstractions, however, with one delegate - Crettyard's John Burke - claiming that some of the players had been drinking in the run-up to matches.
Here's what he had to say:
I'll ask the question here; is it the manager's fault that at least four of our senior football players congregate for drinking sessions? Everyone in the street is talking about that, is that the senior manager's fault? Or is it the players fault? Four of our starting team were involved in that....
...The discussion we'll have will be all over the media in the morning, Laois are doing this or Laois are doing that. You can't drink pints of Guinness and talk shite in a pub, and then play football.
When asked to clarify when exactly he believed the players were drinking, he said "days before" championship games.
The fall-out in Laois looks like it will run for some time, and as a result, the full report from the meeting is required reading.
See Also: Billy Joe Padden Nailed The Problem With Leinster Teams' Attitude
