'It feels like a defeat in our dressing room'- Laois' Justin McNulty after Carlow comeback to draw in Tailteann Cup

The Laois Senior footballers looked to be heading towards a convincing win against Carlow on Sunday but a late Carlow rally saw Niall Carew’s side get a point late on thanks to an Aaron Amond penalty. 

Laois manager Justin McNulty spoke after the game about how the draw felt like a defeat inside the Laois dressing room and that Laois needed to be stronger in defence as Carlow could have had more than the two goals that they scored.

“There's no hiding from it. It feels like a defeat in our dressing room. The fellas are not happy about how things ended up given the position we were in. Going down the stretch, eight points clear and really should have saw the game out and just not good enough.

“This is something we identified throughout the game. We recognised that they were able to cut through us too often and had goal chances they left behind them, probably more than they scored so we know we have to rectify that. It was a flaw in our game that we identified and we knew it had to be addressed but it caught us before the final whistle and we know it's something we have to fix,” McNulty said.

Laois’ starting 15 saw seven changes in personnel with Simon Fingleton, Mikie Dempsey, Rioghan Murphy and Niall Dunne all making their starting Championship debuts. McNulty knows that the Tailteann Cup is all about getting his squad prepared ahead of Laois’ Division Three campaign in 2025.

“Some forced but some strategic. We know we have to grow our squad. We have to grow our squad to be able to compete in Division 3 next year and for the fellas to be able to compete in Championship Football so you can't do that unless you try things

We have complete confidence in the fellas we tried and the fellas we brought in and we now are looking at them to see the character and see if they've got what it takes to bounce back and turn this around because we haven't much time to lick our wounds. 

“We have to get back on the horse and that has to be done before next Sunday when we have a tough, tough assignment away to Wicklow in Aughrim, who are obviously the walking wounded as well and they'll be coming fighting with all guns blazing and we know we’ve got to be ready for that performance,” he said.

McNulty was quick to give Carlow credit for their comeback victory but reiterated that Laois need to be securing victories when they’re in such good positions.

“Fair dues to them, they dug it out and probably they were as shell-shocked as we were at the end of the game having brought it back to a draw but when you're eight points clear, going down the stretch, you should be seeing games out,” McNulty said.

The Laois manager expressed his disappointment in the result as well as an acknowledgment that Laois played some excellent football at times during the game which led to them getting into such a good position in the contest.

“We have a strong squad, we have fellas who have been very committed and very diligent in terms of their preparation and they're on the pitch because we believe in them. We don't lose that faith just because of a sucker punch going down the stretch performance which we had today and these things happen in sports sometimes, it's hard to take.

“There's a lot of soul-searching around it, we need to do that soul-searching but we can't feel sorry for ourselves for too long. We've got to recognise where we went wrong, identify where we went wrong, identify where there are areas of improvement and identify what went well because there were major phases of the game where we played enormously well, some fantastic scores taken, some fantastic patient attacking play, kick-out strategies that worked for the most part but we know we conceded too many goal chances and when you do that against good teams, they will punish you. Carlow didn't punish us for a lot of the game but they punished us at the end,” he said.

McNulty made a big call with 61 minutes played as he took off Mark Barry and Evan O’Carroll, a decision which he attributes to keeping the players fresh for the remainder of the Tailteann Cup.

“We've always said in advance of this Tailteann Cup that we're going to go into the squad because it's a squad competition. I think probably last year they felt the belief was that they were jaded by the time the big games came along. We know we have a big ding-dong game next week but we obviously thought that we were out the gates probably and so we were trying new fellas as well but that wasn't an indicator for us to take a foot off the gas. 

“It was an indicator for us to see what fellas had to offer coming in and I wouldn't necessarily attribute that as to why they scored their goals, they had been threatening goals all throughout but we need to realise and recognise we should be closing games out when we're that far in front coming down the stretch and we need to recognise and realise what was the reason behind them opening us up at will on occasion and how we can address that before next Sunday because if that happens again next Sunday we'll be beat out the gate,” the Laois manager ended.

Laois travel to Wicklow on Sunday, May 19 to take on Wicklow in Round 2 of the Tailteann Cup at 3pm. That game can be viewed on GAAGO.