First Leinster Club Success
December has been a happy month for Portlaoise in Leinster Senior Club football. We’ve won 4 of our 7 in December.
Victories over Skryne in 2004, Garrycastle in 2009, Parnells in 1988 and Baltinglass in 1985.
Paddy was a member of the Laois minor hurling team of 1934 that won Leinster honours and was pipped by a point by Tipperary in a farcical finish to the All-Ireland final which was kept going for over ten minutes of extra time until the Munster men got the winning score. His father, also Paddy, was a well-known boxing coach and was an ally for many years of the legendary Portlaoise boxing supremo, Garda Billy Blackwell, who helped establish Portlaoise Boxing Club as one of the foremost in the country. His sister, Rosie, was wife of another famous Laois hurler of the period, Mick Hopper, and their son Noel, also a great supporter of the “Town”, was a classy player for Portlaoise under age teams in the 1950s.
December has been a happy month for Portlaoise in Leinster Senior Club football. We’ve won 4 of our 7 in December.
Victories over Skryne in 2004, Garrycastle in 2009, Parnells in 1988 and Baltinglass in 1985.
Paddy Critchley figured on Irish Worsted Mills teams and won championship
medals with Kilminchy at minor level in the 1940s and Park seniors in the early
1950s.
Tom Flynn pays tribute to the men of 1958 who won the Laois football title only for it to be taken away on appeal in Portlaoise Courthouse.