Crossroads always return to Wexford for Éanna Martin

Éanna Martin is at a crossroads. The versatile Wexford hurler, who has played both in goal and outfield for the county, left Cork this year after 10 years between college in UCC and work and is now based in Dublin, working for Irish pharmaceutical company Phoenix Labs.

The spell in Cork was good and gave him county medals with Sarsfields but he now has to consider where to hang his hat and his home club of Geraldine O’Hanrahans in New Ross is now a far more convenient option.

“It would be, yeah. You have to look at where you’re living and how busy you’ll be at work but the home club is always going to be an option.”

Despite the lengthy sojourn in Cork he never considered transferring for inter-county purposes.

“Not really. You’re from Wexford and you want to play for Wexford since you were growing up. I was always fortunate enough to be able to come home from Cork.”

After such a promising 2014 this year was a disappointment for Wexford whose championship concluded in big defeats by Kilkenny in Leinster and by Cork in the All-Ireland qualifiers.

He says that despite the intimidating prospect of travelling to Kilkenny if they reached the Leinster semi-finals, the panel was upbeat about the challenge.

“I suppose we were looking at it positively really because you want to play Kilkenny and you want to play them in Nowlan Park, full house and this and that. We obviously had to get over Westmeath first and we did. Growing up you always go to Wexford-Kilkenny games, League finals, all the Leinster finals growing up, you always look at them positively.

“It’s going to be tough because they’re the top team and have been for so long and rightly so. There’s no negativity from players’ point of view – you always back yourselves; you always think it’s going well. I think on the day we got a couple of things wrong and they were flying as well.

“Things probably didn’t play into our hands. Expectations nationwide – people saw who was gone from the Kilkenny panel and they have all these retirements and they’re going to be under pressure but if you know your hurling you obviously know that they have a seriously strong team there again and they proved that, they went on to win the All-Ireland.”

That campaign began for Kilkenny with a 24-point hammering of Wexford.

“People’s perspectives going into it might have been a bit off,” says Martin. “From a players’ point of view, we were confident going in. Unfortunately on the day it all went wrong. Didn’t happen for us.

“It’s who you want to play. You want to play Kilkenny; you want to play the best teams so there’s never a negativity towards it or a psychological thing. You just know you have to be right going in because if you’re not you’re going to be blow away.”

Unfortunately such a big setback created problems for the next match, a qualifier against Cork in Wexford Park. Asked was the Kilkenny blow-out a drawback going into the next match, he agrees.

“It was. Obviously coming out of Nowlan Park after that defeat, it’s not easy. You have to regroup and we happened to get Cork, which was a tough draw as well. Cork were hurting from their exit from Munster so we did have to regroup, sit down, see what went right against Kilkenny, what went wrong, what we can work on. Focus on the next game as well.

“I know you probably hear it off every player that you have to focus on the next game but you kind of have to do. The way things are gone now you have to learn from it, leave it and focus on the next team. That’s what we tried to do. Training went well after the Kilkenny game coming into the Cork game but it unfortunately didn’t go well for us against Cork as well so that was our year really.”

Martin says that Wexford will target a strong league campaign and hope to emulate south east neighbours Waterford, who used the competition as a springboard to a very successful season. The campaign starts with tough fixtures against Limerick and Clare.

“We want to progress, we’re an ambitious bunch. We want to win things – that’s why you hurl with Wexford.”