The Portarlington footballers bowed out of the Leinster club championship at the weekend when they went down to Athy in Newbridge.
Port manager Pat Roe spoke highly of his players afterwards but said he hadn’t made a decision yet as to whether he’ll still be in the role again in 2026.
They won back-to-back Laois titles and then won two games in Leinster this year before falling well short against Athy, who made the most of a good start with the wind at their backs.
“It wasn’t in the script for us,” he said afterwards. “Obviously we gave ourselves a mountain to climb in the first half. We’ve been starting slowly all year and I suppose a good team like Athy was going to punish us.”
Port had a couple of goal chances in the first half but didn’t convert them and headed in at half time trailing by 0-15 to 0-2. Those missed chances – as well as a black card to Sean Byrne in the second half when Port had the gap back to eight – were key moments.
“I think when you are sort of under the kosh, playing into a breeze like that, we had the penalty opportunity and we had a couple of goal chances that we didn’t take. And you need every one of those.
“I think the black card was a big factor as well. We had a lot of momentum. Whether we were to close the gap or not, we would have needed goals to close the gap.
“We really didn’t get a sniff of it in the second half in terms of a goal. But with that breeze, if we hadn’t kept picking away with two-pointers, we might have made them think a bit more.”
“We only got 33 per cent from our own kick-outs in the first half,” he added. “And that’s where the problem lay.
“We needed to get some momentum. The penalty, at the time it came, it would have got us a bit of momentum back as well, but it wasn’t to be.”
Despite the disappointment, Roe had huge words of praise for the Portarlington players, the supporters and the community that rallied behind them this season once again.
“They were fantastic,” he said of the supporters. (The) same as they were up in Drogheda, they were absolutely fantastic. I know the players couldn’t ask any more, and I certainly couldn’t ask any more of the community.
“They got behind the team totally. Look, we’re disappointed we didn’t give them more to shout about. We fully expected to win today. It wasn’t to be though.”
Looking forward then, will he be back for next year?
“I’ll take a bit of time to think about it now. It’s not a good time to make a decision after a defeat, so I won’t. I’ll just take a bit of time.
“They’re an unbelievable group. I couldn’t say any more about them. I’ve been in the game a long time, and I just never met the likes of them.”
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