They are undefeated in PuC - Frank will cut them a nice deal and the sand will remind them of Tramore beach.
3rd of June vs Tipp in PUC could be dodgy because the Cork City Marathon is on the same day. Probably the reason the Limerick game is on the Saturday.
12,000 surely would still be deemed not big enough?
Might still bring in more than they get back from Cork or Thurles
Might be wise to play 1 in cork and 1 in thurles .
Could Nowlan Park be a runner ??
Doubt their opposition or Munster Council would agree to that
Waterford so will play their two home games in thurles?
Assume they will play Tipp in Cork and Cork in Thurles
From the Indo.
Attacker content to focus on hurling but insists Wexford need consistency
Lee Chin pauses to think about when he last held down what could be considered permanent employment.
âWhen I was barbering three years ago,â he recalled.
In the meantime, he has followed his heart by committing to hurling, more or less, on a full-time basis.
Thereâs some casual work when his time allows it with the family business âChin Can Cookâ, a Chinese take-away in Wexford town. And thereâs a growing suite of brands keen to attach themselves to his image from nutrition and sports drink suppliers to sportswear manufacturers.
âI am on a retainer with them (brands). Itâs not something that I like talking about in terms of it making a living for me. Itâs what they do for my service, what they feel Iâm worth. We just work together on a lot of things. I enjoy working with them,â he explained.
Itâs been a growing trend, one which Chin himself touched upon himself in January, where inter-county GAA players continue to detach themselves from mainstream employment in order to focus almost completely on their sport, ostensibly an amateur sport.
A trawl through his own Wexford squad, for instance, wonât throw up anyone working on a construction site, the majority with employment lines that fit neatly around their sport rather than the other way round.
âA lot are taking those career paths to go into that suit hurling,â Chin said.
"A lot are taking the teaching route and other routes but the jobs that they essentially end up with, they understand that itâs not going to have too much of an effect on them physically or mentally.
Labour
"I think they just do it, take those jobs, to accommodate their hurling. I donât think thereâs any lad within our panel that works on a construction site thatâs a seven to four or five job, hard labour, and still performs at the end of the day.
âThereâs no one really that Iâm involved with in Wexford does anything like that,â explained Chin, at yesterdayâs launch of Leinster GAAâs Beko-sponsored Club Bua awards, a scheme that works as a health check and code of best practice for the 800 clubs in the province.
He accepts the âpossibleâ concerns that players who set aside careers in this fashion, at this stage of their lives, to devote so much to their sport but applies the simple logic of happiness to justify any such decision to postpone a more conventional working week.
âI donât really know if people are looking forward that 10 years to when they are in their 30s. Maybe everyone (players) in the GAA are thinking theyâll cross that bridge when they come to it. For me anyway, I think (full-time work and inter-county hurling together) would be hard to do.â
A recent report, âTowards 2034â, commissioned during the term of the previous GAA president Aogan O Fearghail in order to get an overview as to what challenges the Association might need to meet but which has yet to be published, suggested, among other things, the payment of an allowance to inter-county players and, naturally, itâs something that Chin admits to being easily disposed to.
The reality, he acknowledges, will be different.
âThe GAA was never built on the fact that players get paid and everyone that goes into the game understands that and knows that. In the future, if there were players to be compensated for their efforts, I donât think any player would object to it,â said Chin.
Having time to devote to his sport will be of benefit, he hopes, when Wexford play Leinster Championship matches on four successive weekends between May and June.
However, heâs also conscious of the physical demands such a schedule may bring, having recently experienced his first relatively major injury with a grade-one hamstring tear that impacted on his League contribution.
âI think itâs going to be very demanding,â he predicted. "We have (similar) experience in the past. Usually in the qualifier route you only play two games but there was a particular year (2014) when we played three games with two extra-time periods.
âWe almost played four games before getting into the All-Ireland quarter-final against Limerick and you could just see we were just completely a different team by that fourth game.â
Chin recovered from the injury in time for the Galway quarter-final, a high point, followed by the deflation of losing to Kilkenny eight days later before an expectant home crowd. The defeat, he admits, has led to a lot of soul-searching among the players.
âWhen I think back, and look through the group, I donât think there was a day when we really threw in the towel. Even against Tipperary, when they had a good lead on us, we didnât give up, we kept fighting to the end. And we almost pulled it off,â he said.
"Against Kilkenny, it almost looked like we threw in the towel a little early, and the game just got away from us in the second half. Kilkenny came down with a different attitude on the day, and we just didnât match it.
"I suppose over the last 18 months or so, we identified how we can compete with Kilkenny, and beat Kilkenny, and I think we just imagined it happening again, as opposed to really focusing on the work-rate as well.
Attitude
âYou can see over the last two or three weekends, the work-rate Kilkenny are bringing to their game now is just the old Kilkenny, their trademark, and itâs very hard to match that. Itâs not that we canât; we just didnât turn up that weekend with that attitude to match whatever they brought.â
Chin feels the challenge of putting back-to-back performances together is still something they have to rise to as a team, referencing TJ Reidâs performances in Wexford Park and Nowlan Park on successive weekends as the perfect example.
âThatâs something that we might struggle with a small bit and thatâs a lack of consistency, winning a game and then, the following day, probably not performing as good,â he said.
"Beating Galway in the quarter-final and then just turning up the next day and not putting in a performance at all. I find over this year and last year we probably found it a little bit difficult to do back-to-back, big performances against big teams.
âYou could even see it last year with beating Kilkenny in Wexford Park in the Leinster semi-final and getting beaten against Galway in the Leinster final. Itâs something we need to compose ourselves a bit better on, when we beat a big team, maybe coming back down to roots again and just focusing on the next day as opposed to being fixated on the last day.â
Chin also confirmed that he is currently not playing club football with Faythe Harriers.
âI just donât feel that my heart is in it and I just donât think itâs fair for the players or the management for someone like myself to be involved in that and probably not give 100pc,â he revealed. âItâs not that youâre intentionally not giving 100pc but youâre not really having that drive to want to win.â
I donât actually see how he has improved much since going full time hurling.
Matching kkâs intensity should be a bare minimum requirement for any IC hurling team, certainly in the championship.
It must be boring enough.
All your friends/family/team mates off at work and you are pottering around at home or down on your own at the gym or pucking away yourself down at the pitch.
Canât be good for a non professional sports person to have all that free time. Youâd surely crack up eventually.
He canât actually be earning all that much from the brands he represents? Thereâs not exactly a great or long term sustainable career path from it, not to mention that heâs put any future career on hold and is missing out on experience. Unless he goes into a business himself.
Lee doesnât strike me as the sharpest tool in the box. He always has the family business to fall back on I suppose. âBrandsâ he represents did ya ever hear such bollox
I can exclusively reveal that nobody in the world plays club football with Faythe Harriers.
Youâd think heâd be better at the frees with all the free time he has
Lee Chin is a lad that is starting to grate on me moreso lately. he had this nugget last week:
Bit bizarre from Chinners there.
Nearly every inter county player gets two player passes for intercounty matches (which is nearly always passed on to family members) and a lot get given annual club passes too by their own County Boards.
Seems to be having a go there needlessly.
Iâm calling this now. Lee Chin is a bit of a cunt.
To be fair Lee should say nothing about employment .