February 17, 2011
By Staff Reporter
His Laois team (and a virtual second team at that) had just defeated Westmeath by 0-17 to 0-12 in the O’Byrne Cup final at Mullingar to hand O’Dwyer one of the few trophies in football he had never won.
“They say you can’t build a team from nothing but you had six backs out there who didn’t start in last year’s championship,” he said. “All the young players in Laois know they’re going to get a fair crack of the whip and they’ve responded very well. There’s a lot material and there’s going to be a lot of competition for places. It was a good match for this time of year with some great scores.”
Despite the fact that the winners fielded experienced campaigners such as Noel Garvan, Ross Munnelly and Chris Conway, the defense was a new unit. Mick Nolan was drafted in as goalkeeper, Stephen Kelly and Mark Dunne are no more than emerging players and the highly promising Donie Brennan is still at high school.
Laois were much sharper and much more incisive as they built up an early lead with Dunne, Kelly and Shane Cooke landing points. Six points ahead after a quarter of an hour, Laois relaxed and let Westmeath back in the contest; however, the home side was never able to claw back the deficit.
Most of the sizeable crowd of just over 10,000 were there to cheer on Westmeath, but without the soothing influence of Dessie Dolan and John Keane, both on duty in Hong Kong with the All Stars, they struggled to make an impact.
“We’ll address the various problems we have in the weeks ahead,” lamented manager P_id