True Wexford thoroughbred will be a hard act to follow

Hurling Liam Dunne retiresSeán Moran talks to Liam Griffin about Liam Dunne's decision to retire and why it's the right one

Liam Dunne, one of Wexford's All-Ireland winning team of 1996, has retired from intercounty hurling. Liam Griffin, who managed that side, said that whereas he was sad to hear the news, the player had made the right decision.

"He was certainly a great player and I'm sad to see him retire," said Griffin, "but at least he had a great season last year and in a way redeemed himself for the difficulties of the previous three years (Dunne was red-carded during Wexford's last matches in 2000, '01 and '02). So he leaves on a high and won't be replaced easily by Wexford. I think it was the right decision. His time had come and we should be glad for all that he contributed."

Dunne will be 36 this summer and announced his retirement yesterday morning 16 years after his championship debut for the county hurlers against Laois in 1988. He will continue to play for his club Oulart-the-Ballagh.

Current Wexford manager John Conran who led the county to last year's All-Ireland semi-finals also paid tribute.

"Obviously from our perspective we are all gutted Liam has decided to call it a day, but I fully understand his decision. I wish him all the best for the future. He has been a great servant of Wexford hurling, in my book one of the best ever. We will miss him terribly, but we have to accept it and move on," he said.

Over the years Dunne was regarded as one of the top half backs in the game. Although he wasn't particularly tall, he was an effective central defender with great striking ability.

"He's a very brave man," said Griffin. "It was said that he was over-robust but Sunday after Sunday he was subjected to teams sending out big men to try and overpower him or crowd him out and he had to cope with that. He wasn't very big and when you consider that 90 per cent of puck-outs were dropping into his zone, he had to have a range of skills to command his position."

He won nearly all of the game's major honours and was selected an All Star in 1990, '93 and '96. After a fine season last year, his omission from the 2003 All Stars caused disappointment in the county but he was selected as a replacement to travel with the All Stars to Arizona for an exhibition match in Phoenix.

There was speculation when the party was in the US he was considering hanging up his hurl and sure enough that trip proved to be his swan-song. On top of the individual awards he won Railway Cup, Walsh Cup and Leinster under-21 medals but his best years were when Wexford rose to the top of the game in the middle of the last decade, winning two provincial titles and the All-Ireland. Griffin believes the player was still unlucky.

"We would have won no Leinsters and no All-Ireland without Liam Dunne but he should have won more; he deserved to. He could have won another Leinster in '91, a National League in '93 (when Cork and Wexford took three matches to sort out the final) and certainly another Leinster that year when only a stroke of Kilkenny genius stopped him (Eamonn Morrissey's point in the drawn 1993 provincial final).

"I'd regard him as a friend and he was 110 per cent loyal. And he was one of the finest hurlers, stickmen, we ever saw in the backs. He was a wonderful reader of the game and you could always see he was a thoroughbred, a class act."