'We’ve a huge battle on our hands'- Portlaoise Senior football captain Ciaran McEvoy

Portlaoise Senior football captain Ciaran McEvoy is heading into this Sunday’s county final against St Joseph’s knowing that everything must go right on the day in order for Portlaoise to claim their 36th Laois Senior Football Championship.

“It’s the same as another week really, we’re coming off the win in the hurling at the weekend so I’m only coming down from that now. We’re just trying to keep it fresh heading into the weekend. We know we have a titanic battle against Joseph’s, who beat Port in the last round and also beat us in the first round, so we know that we’ve to put the head down and try get ready as best we can to get a performance out of ourselves and try get to the pitch of Joseph’s at the weekend.”

McEvoy was full of praise for Sunday’s opponents and knows that Portlaoise must perform on the day if they are to lift the Jack Delaney Cup.

“We knew through the league that their performances were absolutely exceptional and they carried that into the championship. They’ve progressed it even further every single game. I’ve seen a couple of games of theirs and especially the last game, they’ve gotten so much better. They’re slick with the ball, they know what they’re doing and I even think they were even missing a couple of lads against us on the first day so they have had lads added into the team as well. We’re trying to chase performances every game, we’ve made it a bit hard on ourselves at times over the course of the year. We haven’t really reached the standards that we think we can play to. We know that coming into Sunday, we’ve a huge battle on our hands and we’ll try to get ready for it and see how it goes.”

'It’s been a long year, the hunger is still there'- Portlaoise's Damon Larkin ahead of St Joseph's clash

His Portlaoise side have been rather unlucky with injuries with manager Kevin Fitzpatrick not being able to name the same team week on week due to their injury list.

“We’ve had a funny year in the sense of the amount of injuries but they’ve all come at the one time and all knocked lads out for a good few weeks so the management haven’t been able to put out the same 15 every week due to that fact. Lads are nearly held together with tape and glue at the minute to get them through it but this week won’t be heavy. The lads have been working hard the last week and I was away with the hurling so I missed that week leading into the hurling game. I’ve seen the work that they’re putting in and this week, it’s about trying to fine-tune anything and to keep bodies alright.”

Portlaoise have incorporated plenty of youth into the side this year and that was evident in the Graiguecullen game with half of the team under the age of 24. McEvoy says that the younger lads know what they have to do and that at the end of the day, it’s only a game of football.

“We just know ourselves that we have jobs to do and we get out on the training field and work as hard as we can. There’s no pressure on the younger lads or even the older lads, there’s no pressure because we’re not building it up. It is a county final but it is in essence just another game. There’s nothing really too special so we don’t change our week leading into games. We try to keep as similar as possible so that lads are in their normal routine. The younger lads have played games with us throughout the league and we’re in the guts of 20-odd games together. The lads know themselves what they need to be doing and how to look after themselves coming into a big week. We’re just comfortable with each other now and ready to go.”

'We want to lift that cup again and bring it back to The Town'- Portlaoise's Ricky Maher ahead of county final

This Sunday will see Portlaoise come into a county final as underdogs, a title that isn’t usually associated with Laois teams in championship games.

“After Joseph’s beating the defending three-in-a-row county champions and beating us in the first game, we are going to go in as underdogs. It won’t change anything, we’re just going to focus on ourselves. It’s all about us chasing a performance, results will happen.”

McEvoy is one of five Portlaoise players who play both hurling and football for The Town. The Portlaoise captain says the management from both sides has made the process easier and it’s just a case of showing up where they’re needed.

'St Joseph's are fully entitled to their favourites tag on Sunday'- Portlaoise boss Kevin Fitzpatrick

“Between Tommy and Kevin this year, it’s been excellent, they take the load off the players. There’s five of us playing both and the management keeps us in check and makes sure that we’re not doing too much. Freshness is the big thing for us and it’s something that Tommy and Kevin have made sure it’s something we’ve had all year. They don’t want us in the field six nights of the week because then they’re just going to lose us on both ends. They’ve put the structure in place for us and we know where we’re going, we just have to turn up and train.”

“The league is possibly the hardest part of it because you could be playing on a Thursday and then the Friday, you’re swapping over. That is the busy time of the year but championship is the easy time of the year as you’re going hurling one week and football the other. It’s managed really well and to be fair, it is the ethos of the club to try and push dual players.”

This will be the second occasion that the sides have clashed and McEvoy knows that a big performance will merit a good result.

“We weren’t looking by Joseph’s because we knew what they were going to bring to the game. We knew how good they were coming off the league and how well they were playing. They set a pitch that day that we just couldn’t match and couldn’t reach. We try to take it game by game and tell ourselves that we’ll chase a performance every game. The result will look after itself if we can put in the performance. It was a rude awakening for us that we were well off the pace of where we needed to be coming into a championship and it just shows that in the championship if you’re not at the pitch, you’re going to get caught, we got caught and we lost.”

Portlaoise and St Joseph’s clash at 3.30pm in Laois Hire O’Moore Park on Sunday, October 15.