'Worst ever'- Laois GAA pundit Colm Parkinson hopes for 'miracles'

Colm ‘Wooly’ Parkinson has become a household name in the world of GAA ever since he made his inter-county debut as a Laois minor in 1995. 

The Portlaoise native boasts an impressive CV with Wooly winning a Leinster Championship at both Minor and U-21 with his Laois side going on to defeat Kerry in the Minor All-Ireland final in 1996.

At Senior level, he was part of the famous Laois side which conquered Leinster in 2003 under the stewardship of Mick O’Dwyer but ultimately fell short against Armagh in the All-Ireland quarter-final in Croke Park. 

2004 was also a massive year for Wooly as Portlaoise went on to win the Leinster Club Football Championship with Wooly named as the Leinster and Laois Footballer of the Year for his exploits in the green and white of The Town. In his time playing with Portlaoise, he won six county titles and also has a Sigerson Cup medal from his time in Tralee IT in 1998.

Since retiring from Laois in 2011, Parkinson has started his own podcast, ‘Smaller Fish Podcast’. The name of the podcast originates from a post-match interview involving Davy Fitzgerald after Clare's drawn All-Ireland Final against Cork in 2013. On that day Fitzgerald said, "It’s harder to get the breaks when you’re the Smaller Fish."

Parkinson had worked with Off The Ball on Newstalk and SportsJoe.ie before deciding to go out on his own and creating the podcast mentioned above.

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“I thought there was a gap in the market when I joined SportsJoe seven or eight years ago because there was no such thing as an hour long Gaelic Football or Hurling podcast. There was definitely a gap in the market then and I suppose I built up a bit of a following through my time in SportsJoe.

“It’s nearly oversaturated with podcasts now but I think I had built a loyal following and I thought that I could get enough of them to subscribe in order to make the business viable," he said.

Wooly made his TV debut as the host of his own TV show based on his podcast. He is now hoping that he can secure a season-long deal with Virgin Media for the 2024 GAA season.

“I went to them and I tried to sell it to them. I contacted Virgin and told them what my potential show would be like and they were interested. It went from there and we had a few meetings, we decided that we’d do a one-off pilot show. This was for them to see what I could do and with a view of them using that show to talk to sponsors and see if they could get a sponsor to come on board. Instead of going to sponsors with a concept or an idea, they now have an actual show where they can go to them and say this is what you’d be sponsoring. 

“Virgin are hoping to get a sponsor on board next year with a view of doing 16 shows throughout the championship. It would be fantastic if it happened and it’s the hands of their sales team now,” Colm said.

Wooly was up against it on the night that his programme was shown as he went up against the Late Late Toy Show as well as the aftermath of the thunderous riots which occurred in Dublin.

“The reaction online was great and that’s all I can gauge. TV companies have their own way of judging the market size and being able to count how many people watched. I’m nearly afraid to ask how it went because it wasn’t just the Toy Show I went up against after the riots happened in Dublin. There would have been an awful lot more people tuning into the news at nine o’clock than there usually would. It was repeated on Monday night but it didn’t get as much reaction as it did on Friday,” he said.

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On the topic of football inside of the county, Wooly feels that football is a dark place and that he doesn’t think it’s ever been as bad as it is now.

“I saw the Portlaoise knock-out games because it’s difficult for me to see all the games because I’ve to watch matches that are on the TV for my own show. The standard isn’t great. I don’t think we need to fool ourselves into thinking but this is the worst that Laois football has probably ever been at. Some of our best players are gone and we’re in Division 4 of the league, we wouldn’t be favourites to get out of the division either.

“I speak to a lot of different people who know Laois football and even some of the older generation can’t remember it being as bad as this. It’s not good, the county final was atrocious. There were people leaving at half-time of a county final. 

“It’s not just Laois, I don’t want to be too hard on Laois. Across the board, you saw the Mayo final that was worse than the Laois final. There are club teams deciding to put a lot of bodies behind the ball and then the opposition not being able to break it down, it makes for a terrible viewing spectacle. 

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“Ballyroan-Abbey are playing something like that, St Joseph’s play very defensively and Portlaoise are playing too slow to get through it. The best team were Portarlington, who I loved watching, and they’re in dire straits because all their good players are gone. Those lads are a huge loss to Laois too, it’s not great. Let’s hope Justin McNulty can perform miracles,” he said.

Parkinson also gave an insight into what it’s like to work under returning Laois boss Justin McNulty. He was part of the setup in McNulty’s first reign back in 2011.

“He had good coaches with him. Paul Clancy was in from Galway, who I thought was good. I thought Justin McNulty was good, he was very organised and he had a very good setup in there. With a lot of management, it’s always about the fellas that you bring in with you. It’s not always about you, unless you’re a Jim McGuinness. 

“Look at John Kiely, he brought in Paul Kinnerk and now Kinnerk’s a genius so often times the coach is more important than the manager. Once the manager can pull it all together, which Justin can. It’s the backroom team which I find is the most important thing. Here’s hoping that Ross Munnelly turns into Laois’ version of Kinnerk,” he said.

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On his pilot TV show, Wooly along with his pundits Armagh’s Aaron Kernan and Meath’s Cian Ward discussed potential ways of improving the rules of the game in order to shift from the idea of teams playing with a blanket defence, 15 men behind the ball.

One such idea which Wooly explored was that at least three forwards and three defenders must stay inside the 45’ in order to get some sort of fluidity in the game.

“This is something that I think is a no-brainer but other people aren’t too fond of it. It would put some natural shape back on the game, it encourages kick-passing and it prohibits teams defending with everybody so there’s bound to be more space. Then when you win the ball back, you’d be encouraged to kick it because you’ll have three forwards in their positions. 

“It would also stop goalkeepers coming out and creating the plus one, the keeper’s not going to run out past three forwards. I think it fixes a lot of problems and as well as that the 3-on-3 will be close to each other for short kick-outs. It might actually mean we see some kick-outs going long. It solves a lot of problems without fundamentally changing the rules of the game,” Parkinson said.

2023 saw the introduction of a new structure in the Sam Maguire and Tailteann Cup with teams being put into groups of four. This meant more inter-county games but in reality, the group stages bar one or two games had little to no excitement with most games becoming dead-rubbers by the time the group stages were finished.

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“I think there’s too many games. We’ve gone from having too few games to having the schedule too jam-packed. They’re trying to force the provincials into the middle of it all when they’re not really wanted anymore. The solution to that is to play the provincials early in the year and then start your All-Ireland Series which connects the league with the knock-out stages, that would be the ideal situation. I know players want games but you have to be realistic, the games are jammed in on top of each other and there’s no breathing space for the All-Ireland Finals. There’s little tweaks you could probably make on that but sure we’re always giving out about something,” he said.

Wooly is hoping that things will improve for the game when Jarlath Burns takes up his role as GAA President in the new year.

“Jarlath Burns is coming in now as the new GAA President. He’s a very smart guy and has common sense. You’d be hopeful when he takes over that things like the Advanced Mark will be gone. He’ll set up a new committee to look at the playing rules and I hope the new committee is better than this one was. We might see some positive change, I’d be very hopeful for Jarlath Burns in his role as President,” he said.