Sweeter touch saves Wexford

Dublin manager Michael O'Grady stepped out of the dank dressing-room where his team were still grieving and wondered if he shouldn't go back inside to fetch a towel to wipe the egg off journalistic faces. Tight smiles all round.

One of those days. Neither dressing-room was spared sobriety. Dublin without playing well ran Wexford to a point at Nowlan Park in a game which crackled for the first 10 minutes and the last ten minutes and which was mostly banal in between.

The bare bones of it give the measure of Wexford's poverty. Dublin had 17 wides and two or three goal chances which a more confident team would have snapped up unthinkingly. Among the wides were three 70s and a close-in free. They were in trouble for such long periods of the game however that it was only when they were close enough to defeat to smell its sour breath that they began to hurl.

"I'm absolutely delighted we're in the Leinster semi-final against Offaly on June 20th," said Wexford manager Rory Kinsella afterwards "We won by a point today. Last year (in the Leinster semi-final against Offaly) we lost by a point. We have lots of work to do on that performance. We were coasting along seven or eight points up and we seemed to take our foot off the pedal."

The reprieve was manna from heaven. Dublin scored 1-4 in the last nine minutes of the game and had they been granted a more generous allotment of injury time might have stolen a draw at least.

Instead their young team trooped out of Nowlan Park knowing they will have no competitive hurling again until next March. Marketing the game in the capital has never been harder as the lamentable sprinkling of blue flags in the attendance suggested.

Wexford will reflect fondly on the contributions to their cause of Adrian Fenlon and Larry O'Gorman. Both players excelled in the first half when Wexford were at their best and it was a couple of big points from Fenlon which appeared to most starkly underline the difference in stickmanship between the sides.

Wexford when they hurled well had an economy about them that Dublin didn't manage even in the swarming final 10 minutes.

Little cameos marked the difference between the sides. After about seven minutes Tomas McGrane, a lively performer for Dublin all the way through, had a marginal chance for a goal. He appeared to take too much out of the ball and ended up being flattened by the inimitable Ger Cushe.

Within seconds the play was at the other end of the field, Larry Murphy was cutting in aggressively from the right wing. Unstoppable, he drew defenders like filings to a magnet, then flicked to Michael Jordan who finished confidently to the net.

Wexford had been a point ahead when McGrane was run over. They tacked on a couple of points to Jordan's goal and Dublin looked winded. Wexford's fourth point on 16 minutes, for instance, was another killer. Tom Dempsey snapped up possession about 60 yards out close to the right touchline. Under pressure, he pulled and the ball was sailing inexorably over the bar.

There was the difference. Dublin found themselves easily hooked on too many occasions and had a tendency to telegraph their intentions.

"We have been losing for so long," said Michael O'Grady afterwards, "that it is hard for us to play with confidence. But this team is very young. They will learn."

Dublin needed their better players to keep them in touch through their worst period, the 20 minutes either side of half-time. Liam Walsh was splendid at wing back. The entire full-back line worked ferociously and David Sweeney at midfield and McGrane at corner forward got through mountains of work.

By half-time, however, Wexford had stretched their lead and went to the break with the scoreboard reading Wexford 1-9 Dublin 0-4. O'Grady in the Dublin dressing-room told his team frankly that only two or three of them were hurling and that the rest had five or 10 minutes of the second half to pick themselves up and get into the game.

Dublin duly scored the first couple of points in the second half and found to their surprise that Wexford's response was less than stinging. Mick Fitzsimons, who had been suffering in comparison to Sweeney at midfield, found things improving when Conor McCann was drafted into the area as a third midfielder.

By comparison Darragh Ryan of Wexford, who had suffered a dead leg in the first half, was slowing up and his influence on the Wexford forwards was drastically curtailed. Whatever, Dublin scented blood in the water as the game lurched towards the final 10 minutes.

Wexford couldn't muster a score in that period and suddenly Dublin were contesting and winning balls that they had no right to. The last wide of the afternoon, a shot inches outside the post by Shane Ryan, left Dublin with a headful of regret.

"We didn't believe we could beat them," reiterated O'Grady afterwards. "We only believed it in the last 10 minutes. We played rubbish I thought for the first 20 minutes. We made a few changes and fellas thought maybe let's go for it. We have a very young team. I must say I didn't think we would come back but in the end we were capable of winning the match. At the end we got great belief."

And on the possibility of his departure? What seemed like a certainty last week looked less likely this week with players and the county board urging him to stick with the young team he has created.

"That's for a different day. The board said to me not to discuss this with anybody and for the moment all our lads are down. There are lots of reasons to be proud. We got no credit from anybody. The media, some of the papers said we'd get a hiding. They mustn't look at league matches or the potential of a young team."

Down the corridor Rory Kinsella was winding up the media interviews and his players were heading for the bus. Heads down and at least a fortnight of hard labour ahead of them.