Laois coasted to a comfortable victory over Offaly in a one-sided Leinster SFC clash in Tullamore, condemning the Faithful County to eight defeats from eight in 2026.<\/p>\n
Offaly, who were relegated to Division 3 after a winless campaign, enjoyed a couple of good spells in each half, but the visitors were by some distance the better side, running out nine-point winners and to ensure a safe passage to a provincial quarter-final next Saturday where Kildare await in Newbridge.<\/p>\n
The O’Moore men were full value for their 2-07 to 0-08 interval lead and Offaly were somewhat fortunate to be only five points in arrears.<\/p>\n
They leaked two goals and could very easily have let in two more as goalkeeper Conor Melia made great saves from Kevin Swayne and Evan O’Carroll in the 30th and 34th minutes.<\/p>\n
A third goal would probably have killed off the hosts who started very poorly. Laois had 1-01 on the board within two minutes with the superb O’Carroll scoring the first of his four points and Kevin Swayne getting a goal after O’Carroll’s two-point shot came back off the post.<\/p>\n
Ciar\u00e1n Burke punched a second goal in the 10th minute and Laois were ahead by 2-03 to 0-2 with 15 minutes on the clock.<\/p>\n
Offaly did improve, with Dylan Hyland getting a two-point free as they trailed by 2-4 to 0-6. Laois were 2-7 to 0-6 up after 32 minutes, Keith O’Neill and Cormac Egan pointing to reduce it to five at the break.<\/p>\n
The winners effectively ended the game as a contest in the first few minutes of the second half.<\/p>\n
They plundered 1-01 without reply with Simon Fingelton blasting home the goal in the 39th minute. Conor Melia made a couple of other fine saves in the second half, one from Paul Kingston in the 41st minute and Offaly staged a mini-revival soon after,<\/p>\n
Dylan Hyland (free), Diarmuid Egan and Harry Plunkett pointed to bring the deficit down to six, 0-11 to 3-11 but Offaly had to get goals.<\/p>\n
Diarmuid Egan had a go with his point while Jordan Hayes was wide with a two-point attempt and Laois broke for home after this.<\/p>\n
Pa Kirwan, Paul Kingston and man of the match O’Carroll kicked three points in two minutes to make it 3-11 to 0-11 and Laois were home and dry.<\/p>\n
Laois: Killian Roche; Jack Lacey, Trevor Collins, Alex Mohan; Patrick O’Sullivan, Simon Fingleton (1-0), Brian Byrne; Ciaran Burke (1-0), Conor Heffernan; Kevin Swayne (1-0), Ronan Coffey (0-2), Riogan Murphy (0-1); Darragh Galvin, Robert Tyrrell (0-1), Evan O’Carroll (0-5).<\/p>\n
Subs: Paul Kingston (0-2, 1f) for Galvin (HT), Pa Kirwan (0-1) for Coffey (55m), Aaron McEvoy for O’Sullivan (60m), Niall Corbett for Swayne (60m), Mikie Dempsey for Tyrrell (61m).<\/p>\n
Offaly: Conor Melia; Shane O’Toole-Greene, David Dempsey, Aidan Bracken; Cormac Egan (0-1), Diarmuid Egan (0-1), Lee Pearson; Jack McEvoy, Jordan Hayes (0-1); Daire McDaid, Keith O’Neill (0-2), Rory Egan; Dylan Hyland (0-5, 1 x 2pf, 1f), Shane Tierney, Darragh Flynn.<\/p>\n
Subs: Marcas Dalton for Bracken (HT), Harry Plunkett (0-1) for Tierney (42m), Jack Bryant for Flynn (42m), Kyle Higgins for McDaid (52m), Conor Dunican for Cormac Egan, inj. (67m).<\/p>\n
Referee: Paul Faloon (Down).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Laois coasted to a comfortable victory over Offaly in a one-sided Leinster SFC clash in Tullamore, condemning the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":393778,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[42,43,40,38,41,39],"class_list":{"0":"post-393777","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-headlines","8":"tag-headlines","9":"tag-news","10":"tag-top-news","11":"tag-top-stories","12":"tag-topnews","13":"tag-topstories"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/393777","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=393777"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/393777\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/393778"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=393777"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=393777"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=393777"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}