Sunday in Croke Park will be another unusual day for Laois football.
It’s a Leinster championship semi-final double header with Meath v Kildare as the curtain-raiser and Dublin v Laois as the main affair.
In comparison to other years, though, that’s where the similarities end.
By the time Laois and Dublin throw in there will probably be fewer than 200 people in a ground that can hold 82,000.
There will be no Dublin fans on Hill 16. There will be no ‘Come on you Boys in Blue’; there will be no guttural ‘Laois, Laois, Laois’ response, one that only comes out when our county’s supporters are at their giddiest at what might be about to unfold.
There will be no pints in Quinn’s or the Big Tree, no sandwiches or tea out of the boot of the car in O’Connell Boys or Clonliffe College.
There will be no stopping in the Poitin Stil or Junction 14 on the way home.
There are some sounds of match days in Croke Park that are no longer heard anyway. ‘Three bars for a pound’ probably hasn’t been heard since the 1990s. ‘Get your programmes, your official match programmes’ – was that still a thing?
But there will be no ‘lock hards’, no ‘hats, flags and headbands’ and no ‘buying or selling tickets?’
In the year that is in it, however, at least there will be a match.
And it’s the latest chapter in the Laois-Dublin championship rivalry.
It’ll be their 35th meeting, their first way back in 1890.
As they would in many of the games (though not all), Dublin would win that first meeting in October 1890 almost six years after the GAA was founded.
Just as now it was a Leinster semi-final, Dublin claiming a 2-8 to 0-1 win. As was the custom at the time, club teams represented the county. Ballyroan were the Laois representatives that day. Isle of the Sea did the honours for Dublin.
It was played in Clonturk Park near Drumcondra not far from Croker. Many of the big games of that era were played there.
Their next meeting came ten years later in Kilkenny, in July 1900, though it was the 1899 semi-final.
This time Laois were represented by Abbeyleix, Dublin by the Geraldines club. The result was Dublin’s biggest ever win – 7-17 to 0-3. They’d go on to win that year’s All Ireland, their sixth triumph since the county’s first in 1891.
Laois would lose again in 1908, 1912, 1915 (after a replay), 1917 and 1920 – all of them in semi-finals.
By 1920 the War of Independence was raging but Dublin were putting together a fabulous team. They beat Laois 2-6 to 0-1 in July of that year in Croke Park but the war raging around the country would mean that it would be 1922 before the competition was finished.
That Dublin team that played Laois in 1920 would play in the infamous Bloody Sunday game that November, the centenary of which is next weekend.
Frank Burke, who scored a goal for Dublin against Laois, was the corner-forward being marked by Michael Hogan, the young Tipperary footballer who was shot dead on the pitch by the British forces and for whom the Hogan Stand is named after.
War and football was intertwined then. The Dublin goalkeeper, Johnny McDonnell, had been part of Michael Collins’s gang that had murdered two British spies on the morning of that Bloody Sunday game. McDonnell’s brother Paddy was the Dublin centre-forward and captain.
Eventually Tipperary would win the 1920 final in July 1922, but Dublin would win the finals of 1921, 1922 and 1923, when they’d beat Laois again, as they would again in 1927.
But the gap was closing somewhat. In 1926 Laois won the first National League final with Dublin their opposition in the final.
And in 1929 Laois would finally record their first win over Dublin in the championship almost 40 years after the sides had first met and in their 10th clash overall.
It was a real thriller, one Laois won 5-5 to 3-10. They had been eight points up at one stage but Dublin fought back to level with time almost up.
“Are Laoighis going to be beaten again?” went the report in the Nationalist. “Will Dublin pull it off?”
But they weren’t to be denied and a free from Joe ‘Bullock’ O’Shea from Portarlington sent Laois into a Leinster final where Laois would lose to Kildare.
It would be 17 years before Laois and Dublin would meet again, and again Laois would come out on top by a point, 1-3 to 0-5, in their first round meeting in Athy. Fawn Hughes from Jamestown got the crucial goal. Laois would go on to win Leinster that year, their last until 2003.
There would then be a 13-year gap before they’d do battle again but this time Dublin triumphed, in the 1959 Leinster final in Tullamore.
And Dublin won the 1963 Leinster final too – as they did the games in 1962, 1964 and 1969. Noel Delaney scored two goals for Laois in the 1963 final but Dublin’s top scorer was Mickey Whelan, a man who would make a lifelong contribution to Dublin GAA.
Laois then came out the right side in Carlow in 1971 on a day Johnny Lawlor scored two goals. Offaly later beat Laois en route to back-to-back All Ireland successes.
When they met in the 1976 semi-final in Tullamore, the Dubs under Kevin Heffernan, were in their pomp. Jimmy Keaveney and Brian Mullins were among their goalscorers as Dublin won by 10 points.
When they met again in Tullamore in 1980, the gap was down to four points and at the same venue in 1981, Laois won 2-9 to 0-11, the goals from Tom Prendergast and John Costello.
In 1985, Dublin beat Laois in the Leinster final 0-10 to 0-4 on a day when Laois had all the possession but couldn’t score. “Brilliant Laois let Dubs off the hook,” was the headline in the Leinster Express.
Ten years would pass before they’d meet again, this time in Navan in another semi-final when Jason Sherlock would announce himself to the wider world by scoring a wonder goal with no boot.
In 1999, Dublin needed a stroke of luck; Ian Robertson blatantly picking the ball off the ground before punching the equaliser in the drawn game. Dublin won the replay.
2003 was to bring another rare Laois win, this one remembered for Fergal Byron’s two brilliant first-half saves, the half-time row in the tunnel and Padraig Clancy’s monstrous late point. There was no supporters on the Hill that day either having been closed to prepare for the Special Olympics Opening Ceremony.
And that game would begin a fierce rivalry in the 2000s. Laois would again be hard done by in 2005 with Dublin winning an epic Leinster final thanks to two late points from Mossy Quinn.
In 2006, Dublin would win well but Laois responded to beat All Ireland champions Tyrone and reach the All Ireland quarter-final.
They met again in the 2007 Leinster final but a good Laois start wasn’t enough and Bernard Brogan got two goals that day.
When they met in 2011, the divide was growing and Dublin won comfortably in Croke Park on their way to their first All Ireland since 1995.
In 2012 under Justin McNulty, Laois ran them to three points in the All Ireland quarter-final.
In 2014, Laois led at half time as Graham Brody made a couple of great saves only for Dublin to pull away late on.
2016 was the controversial fixture in Kilkenny but Dublin put it to bed early on and in 2018 they had far too much in the Leinster final.
And so to tomorrow. Dublin are 1/16 favourites and expected to win by at least 16 points. They’re going for six All Irelands in a row.
Dublin have won the last eight meetings between the counties, the longest run of wins they’ve ever had in the fixture.
Everything is stacked against Laois and the few of us that do get to travel do so with only the slightest hope.
But in a year when we’ve all battled against a global pandemic, the Laois footballers will be happy to take their chances against the best team of all time.
It’s their opportunity to write their own little bit of history.
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