Defeat to Dubs will not be a knockout blow

BY bringing Mike Tyson (above) up in conversation in the last few days, we know for sure that the footballers of Carlow are wide awake to the potential of being left comatose in Portlaoise this evening. All that young Eoghan Ruth (below) is calculating is the amount of damage Dublin inflict in their Leinster quarter-final? ‘Isn’t the Mike Tyson saying that you can plan until you get a punch in the face?’ he asked journalists at the team’s press night. Ruth appeared deadly serious, adding: ‘Our plan is to keep it tight. It would be great if we could keep the score flowing and make sure the game isn’t over early. We want to keep it together and make sure we’re still in a good place after the game.’ It’s a sensible view to take. Pride and dignity come before a ‘result’ on an occasion such as this. Hopefully that will be the case, because manager Turlough O’Brien has done a tonne of good work in the county over the last two years and his players have responded in recent months by putting together a string of excellent victories. In fact, Carlow football has not looked healthier in well over a generation. Make that two generations, if you wish! O’Brien has a young team with oodles of talent, and their game plan is intelligent and efficient. Nobody wishes to see that destroyed, wiped off the face of the earth by a thundering defeat to the second greatest team that has ever played the game. Neither is there much hope that Dublin will go easy on their Division 4 opposition this evening. Jim Gavin’s squad is made up of individuals viciously hungry to nail down a place on the starting 15 — and stay on the 15 until Dublin clinch an historic hat-trick of All-Ireland titles come September. Carlow will get punched, and punched hard. There’s no doubt about it, but O’Brien can seize something rare and wonderful from such a happening. He can watch his young lads get back up on their feet again, and he can see how they respond to the heaviest thump imaginable. Lose but still survive this, and the good news is that Carlow will be able to survive anything in the near future. That’s the mission. That’s how Carlow can lose and still win.