Model mood lightens as wheel begins to turn

GAELIC GAMES: MALACHY CLERKINon how the feeling in Wexford hurling is upbeat as a result of the team's escape from relegation and some underage success

THE WORST? Ah, there was no worst. If you chose one, you’d be saying the others maybe weren’t as bad. If you held one defeat up to the world, declared it the point at which Wexford hurling finally shouted stop, you’d make a nice bookend but it would all be far too neat and tidy. Things got bad and they stayed bad and they felt bad for the longest time.

“There were too many low points,” says Darren Stamp. “I wouldn’t like to be picking one out because they were all awful.”

This is not a lament though. The last thing they need is another sorry shake of the tin for a county on its knees. In Wexford this week there has even been something approaching optimism around the place. It isn’t that they’re going to beat Kilkenny this evening – people are feeling positive, they’re not feeling delusional – but rather that in some tangible way, they’re going to at least land a glove.

Wexford haven’t hosted Kilkenny in a Leinster championship match at Wexford Park since 1949 so they’re making a land-grab for the hopes and imaginations of their people tonight. A double-header along with the footballers and a reasonable ticket package laid out by the county board should come close to filling the place for the first time since it was done up.

The crowd will approach the big field on the hill warily but they’ll do it with an open heart and maybe even, for the first time in a while, an open mind too. This is progress.

“Look, we’re under no illusions,” says Tom Dempsey. “We’re going out against what’s still probably one of the best teams ever. If we can give a good performance, Wexford people will be very happy with that. We all know they could beat us in 10 minutes, that’s a given. But we’re going into it with much more heart than has been the case for a good few years.”

They do so because inch by little inch, a small coral reef of good things have started to grow beneath the surface. Through all the hammerings they took from Kilkenny down through the last decade, the pain stung more for the knowledge that there was no balm on the way up from their underage stock.

When Dempsey took over the county minors along with Liam Dunne in 2007, they were coming off the back of a seven-point defeat to Carlow in the previous year’s Leinster minor semi-final. Six weeks later, the seniors lost the Leinster final by eight points. To Kilkenny, naturally.

Between them, Dunne and Dempsey set out with no more radical objective than lifting the chin of underage hurling in the county off its chest. Standards were low, basic skills lower still.

A few more of the 1996 team got involved at different levels while their name still carried a resonance with the young folk – George O’Connor, Martin Story, Gary Laffan. Others too – Paul and Tony Dempsey, Michael Kinsella, Liam Griffin. Everybody pitched something in – time, patience, energy, whatever they had.

Results bubbled up in time. In Dempsey’s second year over the minors, they coughed up a one-point defeat to Galway in the All-Ireland quarter-final, a game Galway ended with 13 men.

The following year they took Tipperary to extra-time at the same stage before yielding, again by just the solitary point. Dempsey had moved on by then but a start had been made.

“When we were beaten out of sight by Carlow we had, to an extent, bottomed out,” he says. “We were behind just about everybody then. I mean, we went 11 years without beating Dublin at minor. But we beat them in 2008 and the gap has been narrowed somewhat now. We’ve probably been unlucky not to win a Leinster minor title in that time.

“For anyone who knew their Wexford hurling, it was heartening to know that we were competing with the different teams again. At least we’re losing narrowly to Galway and Tipperary now instead of heavily to Carlow. That was important, to make that step back towards where we want to be. We’ve still a huge distance to go but I think we’re headed in the right direction.”

You sow, you tend, you reap. Ten of the team that lost to Galway in that All Ireland minor quarter-final started on Tuesday night as they beat Kilkenny in the Leinster under-21 semi-final. A Kilkenny side which had won the minor All-Ireland in 2008 was welcomed to Wexford Park and beaten 1-16 to 2-12, courtesy of a last-puck free from Emmet Kent that dropped over the bar from 60 yards out on the sideline. Nothing was won only the game, no trophy lifted nor title awarded. But they have a scalp to hang from their belt now.

This is nutritious stuff. The current minor team faces Kilkenny in a fortnight when the exams are over. Nobody’s getting giddy after one win but if Wexford can start growing hurlers again who aren’t cowed by the sight of the black and amber, they’ll be going somewhere. It’s vital that they do.

Darren Stamp has been there for all of it. For the 19-pointers and the over-after-15-minuters. Days when he readily admits they were beaten before they left the dressingroom. Funny, the one day he wasn’t there for was in 2004, when they leapt from the bushes and pounced on Kilkenny at exactly the right moment in the Leinster semi-final. He was away in a strop that year, having walked off the panel early on. Life has a wicked sense of humour sometimes.

“It’s been downhill all the way since then,” Stamp says. “Every year has been a step backwards from the one before. The real low was getting relegated two years ago. Everyone was fierce negative in the county after that. It was ferocious. John Meyler said he never came to a more negative county in his life.

“We used always be able to compete with Kilkenny but since 2004-2005 we were told at every turn that Kilkenny were going to beat us. We just weren’t competitive enough and people were probably just sick going to Croke Park to see us getting beaten. And I think it was the players themselves who weren’t putting in enough of an effort. We were feeling sorry for ourselves.”

The year they spent in Division Two was torture. They were never totally sure just how deep the pool was and every once in a while, they’d drop their feet to the floor to find it only came up to their ankles. No use at all to them when they got thrown into the sea. Stamp detested every minute.

“Some of the games, you’d have no interest in going to at all. No disrespect to anyone but it’s a f****ing Mickey Mouse league really. You had Clare and Limerick down there this year and Laois who were able to have a bit of a go. Carlow put in a few good shifts. But like, it wasn’t doing Limerick or Clare any good to be there.

“It’s very hard to get up for those games. You know you’re going out and you know you’re going to win by 10 or 15 points in some of the games. And then some lads will get carried away with their performances in those games. Lads might come in and score two or three goals against a Mickey Mouse backline and next thing they’re making headlines all over the county. But come the championship, they’ll go up against Galway or somebody and mightn’t get a stroke of the ball.

“Lads were probably getting away with too much in Division Two because of that. The pace is an awful lot slower. It’s a terrible league. It was no good for us.

“Everything was down when it came to it. Everyone was telling you you were going to win games by this and that and you’re going into games thinking this is the case. You’re going to play the likes of Derry – and even Antrim to an extent – and lads are pissed off at having to get up for them. Hopefully Kilkenny will be coming down here on Saturday thinking the same thing about us.”

In Nowlan Park back in March, Wexford went in at half-time nine points down but fizzed about the place after the break and got the margin down to two. In the end, Kilkenny stretched their legs and won by five but in Stamp’s mind there was a chink of light there to be explored.

“They looked very sluggish. They didn’t look like the Kilkenny team of old. They looked fierce tired and didn’t look like they were playing for each other. Two years ago, if you were playing even half a Kilkenny team you’d see that they were trying their hardest for each other. Maybe they were waiting for the championship or whatever but they just didn’t seem to be firing on all cylinders against us. They didn’t look sharp.”

Wexford came through the rest of the league, staying in the division by an eyelash and no more. But that eyelash was enough. And now they’ve beaten Antrim and their under-21s have beaten Kilkenny. A performance this evening and one from the minors in a fortnight and they might start seeing some momentum.

Dempsey warns though against taking their racing line from tonight’s opposition. Wexford should run Wexford’s race, not Kilkenny’s.

“For too many years, we’ve almost stood back in awe of what Kilkenny have been achieving and it has influenced far too much of our own thinking. Wexford would win a game and straight away the talk would be, ‘Ah, wait till ye meet Kilkenny’. That was at all levels. We just built them up far too much.

“I don’t think it’s healthy. I think we were approaching it from the wrong angle. We ought to have been looking at the hurling scene and saying, ‘Right, in all honesty there are probably three or four counties that are ahead of everyone. Our job should be to get to the head of the chasing pack.’ But instead we were basing everything on Kilkenny, judging everything by what they had become.”

That was natural and human and maybe they’ll never totally be able to shake the habit. But they’re trying. And no, they’re not back anywhere near Broadway yet. They might even take another trimming tonight from a Kilkenny side that has presumably been primed for a to-hell-with-you-all execution.

And if they do, so be it. There is little expectation so there will be little hurt. There is hope though. For the first time in a long time. That’s something at least.