Sky still the limit for Wexford's Rossiter

Things haven't been great for the Model county, but their captain sees progress, writes SEAN MORAN

EVEN BY the sorrowful norms of Wexford hurling, Keith Rossiter’s timing was unfortunate. A member of the panel that won the county’s last Leinster title eight years ago, his career since has been spent labouring in the lower reaches of the game while Kilkenny have been redefining the upper reaches.

Time hurtles along and the memorable All-Ireland win of 16 years ago has become sufficiently historic for one of its central influences, Liam Dunne, to be now in his first year as manager and Jack Guiney, the son of one of his team-mates, to be making his first championship appearance this weekend.

Rossiter, who made his first appearance as a replacement in the 2004 All-Ireland semi-final against Cork, captains the team and he too can trace the influence of 1996.

“I was 13 and it really kicked on for me,” he recalls, speaking at yesterday’s launch of the Etihad Skyline, Croke Park’s new stadium roof tour. “I was on a team that won the Tony Forrsital the following year and there’s probably five or six of us off that team at the minute.

“Maybe we didn’t move quick enough at the time but from my point of view I was 13 and it was a great inspiration to me to go and try to lift the Liam MacCarthy. It was great for me to see it and maybe another senior win would encourage more young people in Wexford into hurling. But I think hurling is on the up and the people of Wexford are crying out for a win.”

Rossiter’s quietly upbeat view of the world, being shaped by his Oulart club mate Dunne, extends to seeing the positives in a league campaign that saw Wexford forced into the indignity of a relegation play-off against Laois in the second tier.

This must have been particularly hard for a side that 12 months ago thought it had secured its Division One status only for the league to be restructured but, for the Wexford captain, it’s a necessary stage in the process of rebuilding.

“It’s disheartening because we survived in Division One until the rules and regulations were changed and we’re in Division One B. But you play where you’re put and that’s it. Yes we had a disappointing league to some extent but we’re probably where we need to be for next year.

“It’s progression at the minute for Wexford and there’s stepping stones to take and we made a good step this year, introducing a lot of new blood into the panel. Fifty per cent of last year’s panel is there so there’s 50 per cent new. I think we’re going in the right direction.”

He says the late appointment of Dunne last winter left the team short of direction. It was the intercounty close season by the time the new manager took over and players hadn’t been organised with their individual fitness and conditioning programmes.

Things have been complicated by the rise of football in the county – the footballers have been in two Leinster finals and an All-Ireland semi-final since the hurlers last reached those levels – which has had a traditionally high level of dual involvement.

“A lot of players in Wexford are dual. I’m not one anyway, thanks be to God! – it’s strictly hurling for me and that’s the way I’d like to keep it because hurling takes up a lot of my time. It’s hard to be a dual player: one week you’re kicking a football and next week you’re hurling in the championship, I think it’s impossible, really.

“If you want to be good at a particular sport you’ve to give it your full concentration.”

The years since the most recent Leinster title – won after a superbly engineered coup against Kilkenny, Brian Cody’s only defeat in 13 provincial championships, and a final defeat of Offaly – have passed in a blur of shifting co-ordinates.

“We let the bar slip,” says Rossiter, “not just management – as players we didn’t step it up when we should have either – and now we’re trying to make up the ground we lost over the past couple of years. Kilkenny though have raised the bar even higher and we’re trying to catch up. There’s a lot of hard work going on at the minute but it’s going to take time.”