FOR Mark Carpenter's sake, we'll try to stay positive about everything for just a moment and glance over our shoulders to 2005. Liam Hayes was getting tough with his team back then and any player who missed Carlow training was forced to stand up in front of the group the next night and explain his absence. Carpenter had plenty of turns in the middle but the excuse always remained the same. He had to pick up a body from some nearby morgue and get back to his funeral home as soon as possible. It wasn't long before a theory bloomed amongst his teammates though. More Carlow people must die on dark, wet, winter evenings than in championship time.

Carpenter was genuine but had he not been, Hayes might have made an exception anyway. After all, the O'Hanrahans' player was often the man who pulled teammates down from the cross and carried them to safety. When the county beat Leitrim for the second year running in 2006 an opposition selector approached Hayes, his eyes shrivelled and shattered from what had gone before, and told him he'd never seen the likes of Carpenter and neither had his defence. But we will cut the pleasantries there, because no matter how good Carpenter is, he's still a Carlow player.

"It's 11 years since I first played championship football. I'd be dedicated to what I do and I'd try to get the best out of myself no matter what the area, be it life or football.

But when you are 17 or 18 you notice what others don't. You think you can make the difference and when I got onto the Carlow team, in the days leading up to my first match, I thought I was going to win games by myself and be a hero. After a while you realise that's not happening, but still every year when we were going alright we all would promise each other we'd build on it and we'd become a stronger team. But we seem to go back no matter what and that can crush spirits.

London in the league this year was one of those games that crushed us. Losing to Limerick in the 2005 qualifiers under Liam Hayes was one of those games too. That day especially because we really believed for a change.

Dear Sir, It is horrible to see a great player like Thomas Walsh go to another county. He is a man that has bled and broke bones for this county. To all those who think it's easy to be a county player in Carlow, think again! We have a county board who think of themselves more than the players. We have supporters who seem to love writing bad messages about the team yet are never seen on the banks or in the stands when we play matches. Expenses are not paid on time, gear is never given out until we are the last team in the country without gear and even then we don't get all that we should. So to Thomas Walsh, I wish you the best of luck in the future, I can't blame you for wanting to achieve your dreams and I know you'd rather it had been with Carlow. I'm sorry I can't put my name to this, but usually no one will back you up even though they have the same feelings.

The above letter from a Carlow player appeared in The Nationalist in March after Walsh's move to Wicklow. A couple of weeks later manager Andy Shortall resigned but in truth things had been in meltdown since Shortall took the post a few months earlier. On his first night he asked more than 90 players from around the county to train with him. He got a very local welcome when just over 20 trickled through the gates of Dr Cullen Park. Carpenter was there that night but quickly realised he was the only senior player to have bothered togging out.

"I drove into the car park and it hit me very quickly but what can you do, you just have to get your own head right for a game. It set a precedent though, that night was a marker. We had our first O'Byrne Cup game against Wicklow and even then you could see lads weren't responding or they weren't interested. There was something out of place.

In fact there were lots of things out of place. In a way you get used to that in Carlow because things have been messy here more than once.

A lot of the 1990s, we had club teams that were winning Leinsters and even today whoever comes out of here is competitive, but getting those guys together on a county squad is awkward. It wasn't for me to turn around and ask guys why they weren't interested though.

Andy never asked me either and had he, I couldn't have given him an answer. But it is frustrating. There are times when it's busy with the bar and the funeral home and other lads don't show up and I ask myself have I had enough.

"Obviously Andy thought that too. I got a phone call from him one day and was working and couldn't take it and then I called him back and he couldn't answer. Later that night I was told he'd walked away from us. We'd had a really bad league campaign and the players and the county board met and people got things off their chest. I was caught working that night as well and I was glad because like I say, I don't want to be involved in stuff like that, I never did, I'm just a footballer."

Shortall wasn't the only manager to leave the team mid-way through the league in recent seasons, mind you.

In 2004 it was the turn of Mickser Condon. For him the end was a game against Donegal that involved a late night and was followed by him castigating his players for their behaviour. The problem with that was he happened to be amongst them in the bar. But things picked up that season. This year they've only got worse, in particular a defeat in London, a game Carpenter describes as the worst he's ever been involved in.

"It may go beyond that. In fact it may be the worst game any Carlow football team have gone out and played. The first thing that happened was we could only get a small panel, 19 went to Ruislip and that's a bad start. There were no late nights, no drinking sessions, and we went over after a win against Longford and thought we were being professional.

But it was soul destroying because it wasn't like we were beaten on a bad day by a late goal or something. They were better than us, and no disrespect to London but to say you are a worse side, it's not nice and that really took the wind out of our sails . We found it hard to get moving again. We had slid right back to where we came from and it was a long journey home."

In the end Carlow finished with just two points in Division 2A and only escaped sitting in the dirt because of a superior scoring difference compared with that of the exiles. Their record, minus 51 from seven games. So is there an upside to any of this? "Well I think we have a chance on Sunday actually. We have beaten them just two years ago but in fairness only about three of our team remain, but we have good young players, honestly. We've been here before where we lost a manager mid-way through the league. Luke Dempsey came in that season [2004] and we only had six weeks training under him and we beat Longford in the championship. We ran Laois close that year too.

It's almost more sweet like that as well. And when you actually get a win here, people stop you on the street and tell you 'well done'. It's days like that you do it all for. It's just unfortunate we can't do it more often and maybe we're not going to because it is always up and down. Carlow have a funny way of performing when things are going against them and letting it get away when we're up. Everything is stacked against us Sunday. Most people who know what they are talking about would say Offaly are sure to win but we've a habit of ripping up the form book.

You'd be an optimist then? "I think if you run a funeral home you have to be."