Wexford building from ground zero. But building nonetheless

TOM HUMPHRIESon how the bluebloods have been coping with their banishment from the top tier of hurling. They've been learning and yearning

LIGHTS. CAMERAS. No action. Thurles last Saturday night had a certain monochrome charm to it. Unfeasibly large feathers of snow floated like dreams down from the eternal blackness above the stands, each hovering momentarily in the glare of the floodlights before helping to carpet the cathedral floor.

Capped men and women stood in half-excited huddles making jokes about the Winter Olympics, while the stalls selling chips, sausages and soups thrived and issued great savoury belches of steam into the night air, like a locomotive from which a cinema heroine would watch her man recede forever from the station platform. The greatest hurlers in the land popped in and out of the tunnel staring at the sky and wondering like the rest of us whether the gods would license any hurling.

They did. But not in Thurles. Fast forward to Sunday afternoon. The National Hurling League got underway in some marquee venues with bluebloods swatting each other.

For some others, Act I Scene I was played out on stages described as off-off Broadway. In Mullingar, Westmeath entertained Wexford. Maybe entertained is the wrong word for such a raw, dour afternoon of struggle. Westmeath and Wexford hurled.

Wexford won. Ah the beloved yellabellies of yore, mottled blue and goosepimpled in the midlands gloaming. The outcome didn’t require much space in the Sunday papers next morning. Wexford, in their second season away from the main stage, scarcely expected more. Six years after the county’s last great ambush of Kilkenny in a Leinster final, Wexford are forgotten but not gone.

There are two ways of looking at Wexford. Maybe three, and we will come to George O’Connor in a while.

Those diehard conservationists, who, like the poor, shall always be with us will argue that Wexford should never have suffered the indignity of banishment from the top table. They were the victims of cruel and unusual circumstances and for the good of hurling their wellbeing should have been protected.

And there are those who will rise from their meditation mats and announce bad cess to them anyway. Wexford deserved a dose of wilderness, having squandered the glorious opportunity which 1996 gave them and having squandered again.

And by now it doesn’t really matter. Wexford are at ground zero and building. How they got there shouldn’t be a matter of contention. Blame won’t solve a thing.

“It has damaged us,” says Diarmuid Lyng. “We have to take ownership for it too, though. We got ourselves relegated, I suppose, so there is no point in blaming anybody else. Regardless, it does no favours. It did no favours for Offaly last year. None for us for the past two years. Hopefully we will get out.

“You can argue that it will bring other teams along, playing the likes of Clare and Antrim, and the development of those counties is important, but from a Wexford point of view, from anybody’s point of view, you want be playing the best.

“Then again, from our own point of view we haven’t been setting the world on fire so you can’t have a sense of entitlement about it. You have to play the teams that are put in front of you and know that they could beat you.

“If you are preparing for Kilkenny or Tipp in the first few weeks of March though, you are going be willing and able to put in that little bit more. It shouldn’t be that way but human nature being what it is that is the way things are.”

Last weekend, with virtually no hurling work done, there briefly loomed the prospect of an upset. A small crowd shivering in Mullingar saw Westmeath take a 0-4 to 0-1 lead from the off.

Wexford, so unfamiliar shorn of their totem, Damien Fitzhenry, were at a crossroads for a few minutes. They hit 13 of the next 14 points in the game though, and steadied themselves by half-time.

“We got a bit of breathing space before half-time,” says Colm Bonnar, in his second year of managing the side, “ but Westmeath came out in second half and scored five without reply again. We got a goal near the end of the game to put a bit of a gap between us.”

No tears and no drama then, but nobody in Wexford will need reminding they went to Belfast last spring and lost to Antrim and had to wait until Antrim themselves tripped before wrapping up a place in the top two play-off with Offaly.

“The games down here are tough and physical,” says Bonnar. “We have Down this weekend, and we know Down played Westmeath in the Kehoe Cup semi-final and it was 19 points to 18. So it’s another tough one.”

Learning comes the hard way, but it comes. Wexford recall going to the Ards peninsula last winter and having to hurl extremely well for the first 25 minutes to get away from Down.

They won some games in Division Two by 20 points or more but never knew what to expect.

“You have to respect what is around you in Division Two,” says Bonnar. “Westmeath had six or seven hurlers who would grace most Division One sides but up in Division One the game is played at a higher tempo. When you play that week in and week out it drives your standards up.”

Learning. Yearning. Last year Offaly and Wexford scrambled to the top of the Division Two heap and were required to play off for the single promotion place. They played. Offaly won. An hour later the Wexford panel found themselves watching the Division One league final between Tipp and Kilkenny.

“It was a different game,” recalls Bonner. “Higher intensity. Players with extreme conditioning. They looked like the top two teams in the country. That’s what we aspire to. Being tested week in and week out by the best players in the country, it tells you more about yourself as a player and more about yourself as a team. You have to be in Division One to experience that.”

There are other things you have to be in Division One to experience. Like crowds. And attention. In Mullingar last Sunday the gathering was small and intimate. The Wexford hurling public have virtually told their team to get back to them when they have good news about promotion.

“There’s weren’t many there,” says Bonnar, “and that’s a fact of life in the division. People have voted with their feet and stopped going to games. There is very little media attention. So it is up to us to raise our own intensity and drive it on.”

This year that involves quite a few tricky fixtures. Being a top two side in the division is tougher than people allow. Laois, Antrim and Clare all have serious ambitions. Westmeath are there or close most years.

Even Carlow, following on from recent championship successes, have been working under the expertise of Gerry Fitzpatrick, who did so much good work with Waterford. There is a kick in Carlow sometime this spring.

“It’s a no-win situation,” says Gizzy Lyng. “You want to be playing the top teams, but in Division Two you go off to win and you are expected to win, but you have to worry. There’s some good hurlers and you’re one of the teams they want to beat.

“There are two lines you can take. You can’t look at any game for us as a foregone conclusion. Laois are flying and we are going there. Carlow will have a right cut at us and we are going there. And in two weeks we have Clare in Ennis. They are huge games for us.”

Wexford have turned out decent minor teams for that last two years and have begun taking a steady intake each year. Players like Harry Kehoe and Paul Morris are developing into fine prospects.

“We’ve brought in a gang of young fellas,” says Lyng, “some of them a little too young yet, but when we went in first we learned a lot from Darragh Ryan and Adrian Fenlon.

“They are training hard and working hard now. We are just trying to get that work ethic going now. We want more from ourselves first, the more senior members to lead it out. The younger fellas will come behind us. Those lads will look after themselves if the leadership and example is there.”

If there is a sense of crisis it has escaped George O’Connor, the county’s development officer for hurling and a serene man who has seen it all before. George doesn’t do despondent.

“Wexford hurling? I wouldn’t call it a problem, I have to say.

“It’ll be a few years before we are back but all we want to do is consolidate, really. I was in Division Two in 1982 and Kilkenny were in it with us. The two of us got to the league final.

“Ask what we formed the GAA for. It was to have something to do at the end of the day. Sometimes I think we have to get a grip on ourselves, re-evaluate. The game is there for people to play and enjoy. If people want to play at the top level it is no bother, it is great but it’s not everything. It’s all about quantity of hurlers they have and the quality of work they put into it.”

Down this weekend. A series of threatening, weather-pocked games ahead. Wexford hold the head, always holding the head, but time is ticking.

Best not to look up.