Laois add to promotion hopes with win over Sligo

Laois backed up their big victory away to Leitrim last week by putting another Connacht side, Sligo, to the sword this afternoon.

Justin McNulty's charges defeated Leitrim by 23 points and while the margin of victory against Sligo today wasn't as big, the performance was arguably more impressive.

Right from the off, Laois were on top and Sligo could not live with their relentless attacking intent.

There were hairy moments for the victors in the first half and they got two massive slices of good fortune that kept all the momentum with them.

Keeper Killian Roche got caught under a Sligo kickout in the middle of the half and Sligo chanced a long range effort but it just went wide.From the next kickout Sligo attacked, cut the Laois defence open but Liam Deignan slammed and effort off the bar.

From the rebound, Killian Roche got back up and made a brilliant block. If either of those chance had gone in, it could have been a different game but Laois were on top otherwise.

Playing for the third week running, Laois started like a train here. They were 0-07 to 0-01 up after a quarter of an hour and it was 0-14 to 0-04 by half time.

In all they had nine different scorers in the first half.

Mark Barry was Sligo's chief tormentor with five points while James Kelly kicked a two-pointer and Damon Larkin, Danny O’Reilly, Padraig Kirwan, Kevin Swayne, Killian Roche, Brian Byrne and Ben Dempsey all pointed from play.

Laois were well in command but with the new rules and a slight wind, Sligo weren’t utterly out of contention.

They did up their performance for spells of the second half and three two-point scores helped close the gap, but Laois always had a response.

At one stage Laois were 12 points ahead in the second half and though Sligo rallied