Codd content to be still making hay

All-Ireland SHC Semi-final/Interview with Paul Codd: Keith Duggan hears how Wexford's free-taker has learned to tackle loose words of criticism from fair-weather supporters and savour days like tomorrow's Croke Park showdown with Cork.

It is a life of extremes. From the relative sanctuary of farming six days a week to the out-of-body experience of hurling in an All-Ireland semi-final on the seventh. It is a schedule with few pencilled-in breaks, but Paul Codd does not mind. As well as providing his livelihood, tilling potatoes offers perspective and even an escape from having a hurler's soul.

Roy Keane prefers dogs to people? Maybe he should try the therapy of potatoes.

Spuds, after all, don't boo a man for cracking a free one yard right of a post from 70 metres out, with the sweat stinging his eyes, his mouth the texture of salt and his hands swollen. Spuds don't write newspaper columns - although sometimes Paul Codd wonders - taking cheap cracks at Wexford hurling. Spuds don't walk around in purple and saffron jerseys, they don't tap you on the shoulder and give you uninvited lip about Where It All Went Wrong while you stand nodding and marvelling at just how real, how sore, the pain of losing is. Spuds don't harp on about 1996, the glory year for Wexford spuds. They don't opine that you may as well throw your hat at it as long as the Cats are in the mood. Farming potatoes can be long and exhausting and lonely but even on the toughest days, you are free from opinions about Wexford hurling and that alone can make it feel like heaven.

Don't get Paul Codd wrong. He is only 26, not the Grumpy Old Man of the Sunny South East. This week, he is in sparkling form. The sun has been beating down on the land and Cork, red and imperious and full of swagger, run the idle corridors of his mind.

"Sure it's brilliant to be in a semi-final, it's what we've been working towards and things are going well for us. And with the sun the way it is, it doesn't get much better."

To be hurling in August is to know that in general, life is all right. No, he is happy. It is just that at some point in the not-too-distant past, some part of him got tired. Tired of politely listening, of nodding, of accepting, of holding his tongue.

In 1996, he was really just a kid when Wexford's unique colours gloriously lost the stigma of defeat in a summer marked by forceful hurling and the language of Liam Griffin, who spoke about hurling in his county the way Walt Whitman spoke of America.

Wexford was moved and Paul Codd reaped the bounty. He was a kid and he enjoyed it. Then the frost set in; after retaining the Leinster title in 1997, Wexford grew aged and a normalcy fell over the place and since then the accusation has grown louder that the county is gently and imperceptibly falling into a black hole.

"I read the other week, I think it was Pete Finnerty, saying he hoped it would be one of the other three teams in the final so that we would have a proper All-Ireland final. You have to put up with a lot of that kind of stuff. We don't care. Let people say or think what they like about us. Sure I suppose if we don't win against Cork, oul' Pete will be dead right."

Codd knows Wexford hurling isn't perfect. But sometimes the way it is spoken of, it is as if it is a sinking ship that the current generation are merrily firing canons at. It is as if they do not care. One of the things that gets Codd going is the very notion that county players should take abuse or even criticism after a game. In the aftermath of the Leinster final defeat to Kilkenny, he spoke about it, suggesting maybe people should think before they talk.

"Generally speaking, Wexford supporters are the best in the world and the vast majority turn up to see us through thick and thin and they are the ones that don't say a word when it doesn't go well. But there are some for whom Wexford hurling is just a day out, to get dressed up and head up for the match and a few pints. And that is fine. But the players are the ones who have been sacrificing everything since January. They don't lose on purpose. People can forget so quick."

In the past, he has elected to court the received wisdom from half-sloshed Wexford men and thank them afterwards for explaining his worthlessness to him, his shortcomings in comparison to the splendid fellows from Kilkenny or wherever. That does not happen anymore.

"I think they know better," he says with a dark laugh. "I think they know they might hear a bit back."

To be outspoken would not be Paul Codd's way but when there is something on his mind, getting it out there is the best way to clear it. That is why he chided supporters for booing the free-taking on a television interview immediately after the Wexford-Offaly game. Codd was immaculate that day, landing four frees and two 65s. It was his young opponents he was thinking of.

As he sees it, a lot of the rhetoric is just so needless. So Kilkenny won their sixth Leinster title on the trot, 2-23 to 2-12. Don't people know the Wexford boys understand they have taken a pummelling? Do people reckon it feels pleasant to lose to the same set of lads year in, year out? "Terrible," is Codd's verdict on that day.

There was a bad feeling in the team the entire afternoon: no synchronicity, no fight and no real energy. It was like a bad dream.

"And the amazing thing is we were three points down with 10 minutes to go. If I had known that beforehand, I would have felt we could have taken the game to them from there."

The last stand has, after all, become Wexford's party-piece. They are a second-half team to such an extent it might be quicker just to leave them six points adrift and play 35 minutes of hurling. It is as if they need to find themselves in a tough place to locate whatever it is makes them click. Against Offaly, they timed it exquisitely, against Antrim a fortnight ago they left it perilously late.

It is an aspect of Wexford hurling that Codd realises is in need of repair. He does not celebrate their reputation as merchants of the death-defying comebacks and yearns for the afternoon that Wexford will come out flying.

And he knows there are more problems. Kilkenny's dominance gnaws at him as much as anyone but he fails to understand why Wexford's deterioration is regarded as an implicit part of that story.

"The fact is, there are two teams from each province left in the semi-finals. And if Kilkenny were playing in Munster, who is to say they wouldn't be sweeping there?"

Nor is it news to him that Kilkenny have spent the last decade polishing the minor silverware. He hears Liam Griffin fretting on the airwaves about the Wexford game and sometimes the passion in the voice makes him wince. But the underage game was not exactly shining when they won in 1996 either. And there have been under-21 successes since then.

"I don't know," he says, "maybe it is hard to see all the things that are wrong when you are immersed in playing for the county and trying to make things better."

And he knows that virtually nobody in the hurling community anticipates Wexford making it better tomorrow. Cork snap their fingers, announce they are ready to win again and everyone fawns over them. Armed with the medals of 1999, the shrewd leadership of Donal O'Grady, a handful of bright young things and that ineffable Cork confidence; they are regarded as unstoppable. At least that is, they are regarded as unstoppable facing Wexford.

Paul Codd knows this but asks if you will pardon him for turning up at Croke Park all the same tomorrow. Cork's riches are for others to be impressed with. His concerns are with captaining his team, with making sure that tomorrow, there is no bad feeling in Croke Park.

Fr Paddy McDonald, at the heart of hurling in Rathnure since Codd was a small boy, died recently. His passing hammered home to Codd the value of these days, of why he plays, of why his grandfather played. Talking about the immediate future, of contesting a game for a place in Wexford's first All-Ireland final since 1996, that pleaseshim. He talks of the way his day might go and suddenly gets side-tracked, ruing the abrupt introduction of the new sliothar, which has proven temperamental.

"It's fine for distance but accuracy is a problem. There are lads missing frees this year that they would normally put over. It's typical of the GAA anyhow just to land this on players without any prior warning. The old ball was just fine."

There: he has said it. It is out and over with. Now, he can take frees with a happy conscience. Now, it is the seventh day and Paul Codd can hurl against the world.