IAN O'RIORDANsays expectations about Laois may be low, but Seán Dempsey's team includes several gifted young footballers

IF LAOIS needed any reminder of their poor ratings in Leinster football then RTÉ’s decision to divert their camera crews from Croke Park to Páirc Uí Chaoimh provided it. Who wants to watch Laois against Meath, when they can watch Kerry against Cork? Again!

Of all the teams left in the Leinster championship, Laois are being talked up the least. For good reason. The graph of their summer performances in recent years is one of steady decline.

They were beaten out the gates of O’Connor Park by Kildare last year, and then disappeared against Down with a trace.

This year’s league form was inconsistent (won three, lost four) and now manager Seán Dempsey has gone and named an almost completely new-look team for Sunday’s showdown against Meath.

Just two championship debuts in forwards Paul Cahillane and Darren Strong may not suggest that – but a magnifying glass is required to find any remnants of their 2003 Leinster title-winning team. Only one player starting tomorrow, Ross Munnelly, started in 2003, although Pádraig Clancy has returned to the panel since the league, and is likely to feature at some stage.

Strong’s inclusion is not surprising given he started most league games and performed well. Cahillane, still only 20, is entirely new, and although he made a name for himself in the Leinster club championship with Portlaoise, is still better known for the three years he spent on trial with Glasgow Celtic.

A couple of familiar faces make fresh starts, including captain and key defender Pádraig McMahon, who missed all last year with injury, and Colm Begley, who makes his first championship start for Laois in five years having been off playing in the Australian Football League since 2006.

If anything it is a statement of Dempsey’s intent; out with the old, in with the new. The average age of tomorrow’s starting 15 is still only 23 and although expectations within the county are minimal, that Laois’s time as a force in Leinster has come and gone, there is potential there.

Challenge games may not count for much, but Laois have looked impressive there recently, pressing Cork particularly hard a couple of weeks back (so much so that some of the Cork players have reportedly backed Laois to win the Leinster title).

They are missing their most prolific scoring forward MJ Tierney, who has been troubled with a groin injury, but that must provide the impetus for the other forwards to stand up and be counted – including Donie Kingston and Craig Rogers.

In only his second year in charge, Dempsey can’t be accused of being slow to make his mark on his team, and selector Dermot Murphy reckons the panel as a whole has been strengthened considerably from last year.

“There’s a good blend of youth and experience there now,” says Murphy. “It may take some time. You never know. We’re happy with the way things are progressing. We’ll wait and see how it goes Sunday, but the average age of this team during the league was actually only 22. People have to be patient.

“MJ Tierney is a loss. The injury has been niggling away at him for the last four or five weeks. He’s been getting treatment, but lacks the training and game time, so we went with the fitter man. And Pádraig Clancy hasn’t been back with us terribly long, still has a bit to go in terms of fitness. I suppose the game has come a little too soon.

“There hasn’t been any talk of Laois so far this year but I wouldn’t say that’s unfair. . . We haven’t been setting the world on fire for the last few years. . . . Meath have the game under their belt, performed very well, so all the talk being about Meath is justified.”

A lot of the talk about Laois last year surrounded their discipline, or rather lack of it – and that for some players the motto of the championship was win or lose, hit the booze.

But this year the panel agreed amongst themselves to draw up a charter of what was acceptable and what wasn’t, and so far at least they’ve stuck to it, man for man.

“There was some talk of indiscipline last year, I know that. . . Maybe it does take a few years for a team to settle in, but these lads have worked very hard over the last few months, been very, very disciplined. Football means everything to them,” says Murphy.

Dempsey endured a difficult first year in charge, but the man who oversaw so much of the underage success within the county – including the All-Ireland title of 2003, with some of the players he has on board tomorrow – was never likely to quit.

Dempsey has the required patience. Tomorrow will test that patience again. Laois have the potential to beat Meath, and in fact have beaten them in their last two championship clashes (in the 2006 qualifiers, and the 2004 Leinster semi-final), but it may require a couple more years before that potential is fulfilled.

But can Laois’s defence stand up to the likes of Joe Sheridan, Shane O’Rourke, and Cian Ward?

In ways it’s perfectly set up for an ambush, and certainly worth watching, if not live on television.