"Oh yeah" - the emphatic response of Laois' David Dooley when asked could his side cause a major upset against Wexford in Saturday’s All-Ireland preliminary quarter-final at O’Moore Park.
He was far too young to be involved back in 2019 when Laois defeated Dublin at this stage, watching from the stands instead during the one and only time a Joe McDonagh Cup team has won an All-Ireland game.
His focus in the following years would be on rugby anyway, but despite a couple of seasons in Leinster’s sub-academy, a contract never materialised and Willie Maher brought him into the Laois team this year and already he has become a key pillar of the side.
From the outside it may seem that confidence levels would be on the floor after last week’s Joe McDonagh final loss to Offaly, but the Rosenallis man isn’t one to throw the towel in before a ball has been pucked.
"We’ll always be confident, no other point in playing it otherwise," the 21-year-old attacker told RTÉ Sport’s Marty Morrissey.
Just a few weeks before Laois’ 2019 win over Dublin, Dooley lined out in a Leinster minor quarter-final against Wexford and despite a fine first-half display, they were beaten by 10 points in the end.
Richie Lawlor is the main player from that Wexford side to have burrowed through to Keith Rossiter’s starting 15. Alongside Dooley, Ian Shanahan, Tomas Keyes and James Duggan are likely to start from that Laois minor side.
The player is confident in the team-mates he has shared the journey with, and those he has joined in the senior ranks.
"Our focus obviously changed straight away to Wexford, they’ve been preparing for that for the last few weeks so it’s going to be very tough," Dooley said.
"We’ve a good group of lads and we went in obviously confident [v Offaly] that we’d get the win, so a bit of a knock in the teeth," he continued.
"Still, we’ll regroup, we’ll get the bodies right, get the minds right again and focus for Saturday."
Wexford ace Lee Chin acknowledged that there had been some days when they were simply too powerful for Laois – including their last championship clash in 2022 when they had some 27 points to spare – but he’s still urging caution having experienced a couple of really tight league meetings between the counties since making his Wexford debut in 2013.
"We do come up against each other a lot in the Leinster championship over the years and there’s been some tight affairs and, look, there could be some days that you might just get over them with a few points to spare but it doesn’t mean much, we know that.
"Laois and ourselves can always be very tight affairs and we have to travel up to Portaloise this weekend and we’re going to have to put in a big performance."
Wexford may have missed out on a Leinster final, resulting in their participation in the preliminary quarter-final stage, but Chin was pleased with the character they showed after a tricky start to the round-robin stage.
They were left deflated after a round one draw with Dublin due to the concession of two additional time goals and that was followed by a losing display against Antrim despite a stunning display from Chin.
They recovered though with a fine win over Galway before easing past Carlow to secure a top-three finish despite a narrow round five loss to Kilkenny.
"Just the fact we got off to a bad start in the championship, we needed to figure a few things out, we needed to put in a performance against Galway," Chin said.
"Luckily we got the win there and we had Carlow the week after. What helped us prepare for that I suppose is the result [draw] they got the week before against Kilkenny.
"The result we got in the Carlow game put us back in the running for a Leinster final and we put ourselves back in the championship.
"Obviously we fell short against Kilkenny but we (kept) fighting."
Win here and Wexford set up an intriguing quarter-final against Clare, but Chin refused to engage in any conversation about potential future ties.
"Hurling throws up surprises, we could easily be on the beer on Saturday evening, forgetting about the championship and heading back to your club."
Watch The Saturday Game this weekend from 10.50pm on RTÉ2 and RTÉ Player
Watch an All-Ireland Football Championship double-header, Armagh v Galway (1.45pm) and Dublin v Mayo (3.45pm) on Sunday on RTÉ One and RTÉ Player, follow a live blog on rte.ie/sport and the RTÉ News app and listen to commentary on Sunday Sport on RTÉ Radio 1
