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Irish Times
29-05-2025
- General
- Irish Times
‘Adapt and move on': Laois's Killian Roche on rule change deterring adventurous sweeper keepers
The night that Laois opened their 2024 National League campaign with a narrow win over Longford, goalkeeper Killian Roche filled his boots. The Clare native was his team's joint top scorer that evening, lamping three points from play and two more from frees. He performed a similar function earlier this year when powering UCD to another Sigerson Cup final with important points from play against DCU, MTU Kerry and TU Dublin. This year's Sigerson Cup was played under the 2024 rules while the first five games of the 2025 league also afforded adventurous goalkeepers such as Roche plenty of freedom to roam and score as 12 v 11 overloads were permitted. READ MORE But the shift in rules since then has cut the legs off sweeper keepers who are back focusing on the bread-and-butter basics of goalkeeping again: shot-stopping and kickouts. The Killeshin clubman will be back in action on Saturday evening when Laois travel to Newbridge to play Offaly in the final round of Tailteann Cup group games. A Laois win could see the 2024 finalists top the table and advance directly to a quarter-final. But is it all still floating Roche's boat like it used to and is football as fun with his wings clipped? 'The game probably needed changing in a way. You don't mind it so much. I'd be more worried about the kickout rule. That's probably the one that bothers me a bit more,' Roche said. 'Taking away the back-pass from the keeper is one thing, but still insisting on the kickout going long, that you have to kick it out beyond the arc, is another layer. 'Like, if you go short, but you can't pass back to the keeper, that's risky enough in itself. And that was kind of the issue in the past, where teams went short, got it back to their keeper and had the extra man so they could play keep ball. You can't do that any more. 'Every keeper is in the same boat': Laois keeper Killian Roche is seen in the Tailteann Cup against Kildare last year. Photograph: Bryan Keane/INPHO 'That's the one frustrating thing I find with the new rules, but I don't mind the rest of them. Every keeper is in the same boat, so you just have to adapt and move on.' Ulster trio Niall Morgan, Rory Beggan and Ethan Rafferty were typically identified as the most attack-minded goalkeepers under the rules that pertained before the mid-league change. But Roche was just as keen to live life on the edge and to burst forward in search of a score while leaving the backdoor unlocked. 'Since the rules changed, I haven't been going up as much,' he said. 'You can see it in the GPS numbers even, the distance covered has gone down considerably. It is probably hard to tell an outfield player to stay back for the sake of me going up. 'There are advantages there too. Ethan Rafferty is probably the best at it, he's a natural outfield player, too, and he's obviously a great man to bring up the pitch because he's fresh and it allows other players to get a rest when they're staying back. 'So it works for some, but for other counties it doesn't at all. It is probably harder now to tell an outfield player to hold back for you to go up.' Roche remains a vital cog in the Laois machine as they prepare for what will be a huge derby game on Saturday in neutral Newbridge. A Laois win, allied to a Wicklow win over Waterford elsewhere, would leave three teams – Laois, Offaly and Wicklow – all locked on four points, bringing scoring difference into play. Truth be told, anything could happen when it comes to Laois and the Tailteann Cup. They reached last year's final, and a semi-final in 2023, yet have also endured some of their worst days as inter-county players in the tier-two competition. Killian Roche, pictured playing against Wexford last April: 'You can see the prize at the end of it, it's a pathway to Sam Maguire'. Photograph: Leah Scholes/INPHO Roche, who has started 15 of the 16 games that Laois have contested since the Tailteann Cup began in 2022, was in goals for the 2023 semi-final defeat to Down, when they coughed up 8-16. 'It was a dark day. They drew with London that season too. More recently, they lost to division four side Wicklow in round two of this year's competition, a reversal that few anticipated. It remains a tournament they desperately want to win,' he said. 'You can see the prize at the end of it, it's a pathway to Sam Maguire.' His native county, Clare, will compete in that competition on Sunday when they travel to play Monaghan in Clones. Roche was on the Clare panel for three seasons, between 2016 and 2018, before injury, then a move to the midlands for college prompted a club and county switch. 'Where I'm living now, that's where my life is,' he said. 'I've been living on the Carlow/Laois border for the last seven or eight years now.'
Irish Examiner
17-05-2025
- Sport
- Irish Examiner
Kerry experience inspired Gavin Crowley's tech business venture
As he progressed through the underage levels with Kerry, Gavin Crowley would often wonder why some standout players from the younger grades were no longer involved. The Templenoe man joined Kerry's underage development squads at U14, and progressed all the way to senior level, starting the drawn 2019 All-Ireland final and replay, and being part of the Sam Maguire winning panel of 2022. 'They could be your friends as you're growing up, then you reach minor level and some of them aren't making it, or some of them are dropping out of football," says Crowley. "You think that this guy at minor level is definitely going to make it at senior but never did.' It wasn't until Crowley did a degree in Health and Leisure at MTU Kerry that he realised the promise those players had shown at a young age was ultimately their downfall. They were being pulled from all directions by too many teams. 'Maybe they got injured or got sick of playing because they were being overloaded - not just physically but mentally overloaded - and the enjoyment fell away,' he says. 'Maybe they lost interest because they were getting injured all the time. You probably have lads, 14-years-old, but they're playing with the U16s as well in every sport. They could have been playing on 10 different teams at a young age. 'You just wonder if those players were looked after better, would they have gone on and played at senior inter-county level? Possibly.' The experience inspired him to do a research masters in youth load monitoring, and last week launch YouMon, an app which he believes can help players better navigate the bumpy underage sport road. YouMon allows players, their parents and coaches to monitor workload, injuries and schedules. They can keep tabs on growth rates and maturation. It also provides a safe method of communication between players and coaches. 'The main thing I wanted to combat was players playing multiple sports but the coaches aren't talking to each other,' says Crowley. 'That's really the core of why I developed YouMon.' Since the launch, Crowley has been blown away by the traffic to their website, and the enquiries from those looking for demonstrations. The app had been 'three or four years' in development. He's now onto a different stage: Marketing. Getting customers and turning this into a profitable business is the next step. Two years spent working with Optimum Nutrition has given him some sales experience. Crowley works as a personal trainer at a gym in Kenmare. That takes up his mornings and evenings. In between, he works on YouMon. Being a parent to two children takes up everything else. 'Playing with Kerry, it does give you that sense of confidence to do things by yourself,' he says. 'If I hadn't played with Kerry, I don't know if I would have had the confidence to launch an app like this myself. If I hadn't played with Kerry, would I have had this idea? Probably not. 'A big thing for me was that I had highly experienced coaches. You have the likes of Jason McGahan and Fionn Fitzgerald who are experts in their fields. The fact I played with Kerry, had access to those coaches, it was a great help that I was able to bounce the ideas off them.' It's two years since Crowley retired from inter-county football. There was no statement. He slipped off quietly after the 2023 National League knowing nothing could top lifting Sam Maguire with his son the previous July. Jack O'Connor was 'very accommodating'. The manager understood the player's reasons. 'I retired from Kerry when I was 29,' says Crowley. 'That's probably young for most people but considering I started playing with Kerry at 14, it seems like a long time. Could I have gone on for longer? Possibly. 'I felt I wasn't able to give 100% to Kerry anymore. I had other commitments: a small child, a wife. You're thinking that you love Kerry so much that if I wasn't able to give 100%, you're better off giving someone who can their go at it. 'Looking back, if you're playing every day, you're starting every time, you are more likely to stick at it. If you're not playing as much as you want, you have to weigh up if it's worth it anymore. 'It's when you step away that you look back and think about the amount of commitment that's involved at that level, the amount of days and nights of effort those lads put in is crazy. You have huge respect for the lads that are in there now. If you're not able to give your all to it, you can get left behind fairly fast.' Crowley is now giving his all to ensure young players, like his friends in those development squads nearly two decades ago, don't get left behind. You can find out more at or by emailing gavin@
