Our defending camogie champions have been knocked out by Galway in today’s semi-final with a goal in the 6th minute of injury time.
Played well tho’
Right, I was hoping today that we wouldnt have to put all our eggs in the one basket but now seeing as the camogie girls are out and the naomh eanna young hurlers have completed their community games programme we need to focus on the footballers for the next week.
I doubt there will be too many changes. Collie Byrne came in for Flynn the last day and probably did enough to justify a starting place. As always I’d have reservations about Boccy in midfield but I dont know if Howlin or Stafford are going well enough to displace him.
David Walsh has to be retained in the corner. He’s probably the tightest marker we have in the backline and will have to pick up McCullagh or McGuigan. I presume Cavanagh will roam around the place but I wouldnt expect Wallace to follow him. One of the half forwards - most likely Byrne would probably drop back or else one of the half backs will take him with Byrne still playing deeper.
I honestly think this Wexford team has played to its full potential yet this season. The only thing we saw coming close to it was the last 20 mins vs Meath and the last 10 mins vs Armagh. If we can covert that into 70-75 mins then I’m full sure we can beat Tyrone. If Tyrone play like they did against Dublin then I dont have too much faith - but I think our lads are that bit more intelligent than Dublin and can easily change their gameplan and have lads on the line who can change the way the team is playing. It worked against Armagh where the gameplan was changed for the second half and every one of the subs who came on played a major part.
I’ll be backing the lads as they’ve given me a brilliant summer so far and even if they lose on Sunday they’ve given us the best year Wexford football has since since the last world war. But, they have it within them to beat Tyrone so heres hoping…
A profile on Redmond Barry from today’s Independent:
Ready to step out of the shadows
Matty Forde views him as a ‘right-footed Ciaran McDonald’. Paul Bealin draws from a different vintage for a parallel to Martin McHugh. Pat Roe sees him as the secret behind Wexford’s success this summer.
The plaudits for Redmond Barry come from heavy hitters who have shaped and influenced his career along the way.
Right now there isn’t a centre-forward in the championship who has been more effective, with the possible exception of Padraic Joyce in Connacht.
When the All Star football selection committee sits in conclave later this year Barry’s name will figure as prominently in debate as any of his colleagues.
Forde, David Murphy and Eric Bradley will all have strong claims but Barry has been the sticking plaster for everything.
“Honestly I don’t think I’ve come across a better man to put a ball on your chest than Redmond Barry,” says Forde. “He hits the target every time.”
For Bealin the comparison with Donegal’s McHugh, architect of Dublin’s downfall in the 1992 All-Ireland final, is not exaggerated.
Intelligent
“He was probably one of the most intelligent players I have ever managed,” says the Wexford manager of 2006 and 2007.
“He is the ultimate playmaker. He carries the ball and can bring play quickly from defence to attack. He can also kick scores and win frees. He is genuinely a McHugh in the making.”
Those sentiments are shared by Roe, his Wexford manager in 2004 and 2005, when they reached a league final and successive Leinster semi-finals.
“Without doubt Redmond Barry is the most under-rated footballer in the country,” says Roe.
“I’d be keeping a close eye, naturally, on what Wexford are up to and I’d be in touch with a lot of them down there and the same feedback keeps coming. Redmond Barry is the man. Obviously Matty (Forde) is the marquee player, the instantly recognisable one, but Redmond has intelligence that is just instinctive. You can’t coach it.”
His sporting talent is multidimensional. Nine days ago Wexford Park hosted two championship hurling matches featuring Barry’s club, St Anne’s of Rathangan, and Oulart the Ballagh, St Martin’s and Shelmaliers. By common consensus Barry was the best hurler on view.
His now exclusive relationship with the Wexford football team is a reflection of the growing strength and esteem the county has in the bigger ball game.
Immense
Traditionally a player of Barry’s immense talent would have been drawn to hurling. It would have been considered ‘the right thing to do’.
But in 2005, after another season of delicate balancing, Barry opted for football.
Bealin sat down with him and implored on him to make a choice that leaned towards football. Bealin’s reasoning was that if Sean Og O hAilpin couldn’t do it (play both codes at the highest level), neither could Barry.
That spring he had played for the Wexford footballers in their league semi-final win over Tyrone in Portlaoise and later that evening he had dashed to Kilkenny for a league match in Nowlan Park that Wexford lost heavily.
Later that summer, Barry had come off the bench as a substitute for Adrian Fenlon in a Leinster final against Kilkenny that Wexford led at one stage by seven points, but lost by just two.
The defeat deflated him but that wasn’t what deterred him from hurling on. His loyalty to the football squad, not the game, was just that bit stronger. They were the first who had come calling for his services and that meant something to him.
Talent for sport drips from his limbs. “He just seems to have a cognitive map of any skills set,” observes Roe.
At the Cistercian College in Roscrea, where his family had a tradition of schooling, his sporting acumen became quickly apparent.
When he was 15, he pole vaulted his way to an All-Ireland schools junior title in June 1996 and nine months later represented Ireland at the three As championships in Birmingham when he climbed to a personal best of 3m 20cm.
In another country such talent might have been seized upon but with Ireland’s predilection for team sport he gravitated naturally to the rugby and hurling fields around the school.
Current Tipperary senior hurlers John O’Brien and Hugh Moloney were team-mates when the All-Ireland schools senior B title was plundered by Roscrea in 2000 but even that success was eclipsed by Roscrea’s push to a Leinster colleges senior rugby final against all the odds when they lost to Blackrock College in the final.
Greatest
To this day Barry considers it his greatest sporting achievement – though success on Sunday might force reconsideration.
At the same time, he was part of the St Anne’s double-winning teams that claimed the 2000 Wexford football and hurling titles when he was only 17.
Representation for Wexford at U-21 level in football and hurling followed and at UCD there was a successful Fitzgibbon Cup campaign in his first year, 2001.
But ironically his third-level football career was a lot shorter in his four years there as he struggled to break onto the team.
What strikes Roe about him now is the comfort and time he finds for himself on the ball.
“He carries it so well. I would have played him in the past as a half-back, so too would Paul Bealin. But his proper position is centre-forward. He’s a real centre-forward, who sees the right option almost all of the time. There aren’t many like him around.”
Roe acknowledges that he was “quieter than normal” against Armagh but delivered stand-out performances against Down, Meath and Laois.
"He still scored two points the last day and had Aaron Kernan to contend with at different times. But he has a remarkable engine that allows him to stay in any game. He is one of the strongest characters within that squad, a real leader.
Football’s gain in Wexford has been hurling’s loss. They never thought they would see it that way again in the county but Red Barry’s loyalty to football has been repaid.
IT:
The fact that Tyrone and Jason Ryan’s side are 1-1 in knock-out meetings, their track records are vastly divergent
NEXT WEEKEND’S second football semi-final brings together Wexford and Tyrone for the first time in the All-Ireland senior championship. The counties did play six years ago in the qualifiers and also met in the 2005 NFL semi-finals. Although the record over those two knock-out meetings is one win apiece, the counties have vastly divergent track records at this level of competition.
It’s all of 63 years since Wexford last reached the final four of the championship and the county has to go back 90 years for its previous All-Ireland success, the fourth in a then unprecedented four-in-a-row sequence of titles, whereas Tyrone have won the Sam Maguire twice this decade.
Both of Sunday’s captains played in the 2002 and 2005 matches. Brian Dooher and Colm Morris lined out in both matches in their familiar positions of right wing forward and right corner back respectively.
Morris marked Peter Canavan in the first of those matches, played back in June 2002, and has frustrating memories of a two-point defeat, 0-10 to 1-9, although he equally believes the qualifier system has helped Wexford to rise in the world of football this decade.
“We felt we let that game slip in Wexford Park,” he says. "We got beaten by two points. I was marking Peter that day myself. Maybe from that day in the qualifiers, people have improved. People got ideas from then on where they can travel in the game.
"We played Westmeath in a qualifier as well, a game we drew (in the first year of the qualifiers in 2001), and it was highly entertaining.
“The players believed they could get better and the main thing that came from those games was a lot of the dual players decided they were going to stick with the football rather than play hurling as well, and that definitely stood to the team as well.”
Three years later the NFL semi-final in Portlaoise was marked by a deluge on a day when the other semi-final, between Mayo and Armagh, scheduled for Roscommon had to be called off.
“I did play that day all right and it was a bad day in every way,” recalls Dooher. "You have to give full credit to Wexford - they deserved to win that day. They were the better team that day, the hungrier team, and they probably didn’t go on to play as well in the final (where they lost to a Steven McDonnell-inspired Armagh) as they should have.
“We know they will present a stiff challenge and we remember that defeat three years ago and the qualifier match in Wexford Park a few years before that.”
Tyrone used the disappointment of that match to refocus and ultimately go on to win the 2005 All-Ireland, and for Wexford it was a first breakthrough into the top level of the game.
“The conditions were atrocious,” recalls Morris. "The game possibly could have been called off, I’d say. The conditions were that bad.
“But the end result was what we were delighted with and to be able to overcome some team like Tyrone is something you wouldn’t even have thought about over the last few years. It definitely was a great result for this team.”
This season, the counties are linked by both having played Dublin, albeit with radically different results.
Tyrone gave Dublin a thorough beating in the quarter-finals - the same Dublin that piled a 23-point defeat onto Wexford in the Leinster semi-final.
Dooher is, however, keen to put his side’s performance in context: "When you look at that game, as much a good performance as it was by Tyrone, I think it is important to realise that Dublin did not perform anywhere near their potential. They left us do whatever we wanted, basically. Dublin did not turn up on the day and they will be the first to admit that themselves.
“They had a few bad wides at the start and then we got the goal at the right time and that just seemed to knock the confidence out of them. That was probably as big a factor in the match as anything.”
Morris is asked about the unexpected change of opposition given that up until 10 days ago the public assumption was Wexford would face a reprise of the Leinster final.
“Every team would like a chance at redemption, no matter what the sport,” he says. “But we’re preparing the very same way now. Dublin beat us very comprehensively in the Leinster final and then Tyrone went out and did the same thing to them. That shows how big a challenge it will be for us.”
The Wexford People and Wexford Echo have both gone for 24-page pull outs. I really was expecting at least double that from Ronan Fagan and the lads in The Echo.
Same 15 start on Sunday. Couple of positional switches in the forwards.
Maawn Wexford
Colfer on the edge of the square?
bandage if you want to PM me your mobile no I can text you updates on this game, I assume you have roaming on your phone?
ouch !
the celtic or wexford game dan…
Aye
does Mooney have his annual piece for the county teams bandage? I’m sure you were waiting on that all season long!
No surprises with the team. Colfer played on the edge of the square the last day anyway, with Lyng and Forde inside and Banville and Red on the 40. Byrne will take the roving role I presume.
anyone read Tony Dempsey giving out about Joe Brolly and how the media arent giving us enough respect? Who gives a fook Tony, we earn respect by results and how we do, and we are doing well, so the respect will come. I couldnt give a flying fook if every pundit goes against us and says we are shite as long as we win. Results count, opinions dont. People are too paranoid about what Brolly et al are saying, if ye go to the matches then you wont hear him talking! On the way home after the Armagh game we stopped off at Jack Whites, and met a couple of lads I knew, and they were giving out coz they heard Brolly and O’Rourke saying Armagh lost it, and not Wexford won it. Apart from the fact that they were going on hearsay, I said, who gives a flying fook, we’re in an All Ireland semi.
I’m glad I havent heard much from players or Ryan in the last few days either. Keep the head down and leave the talking for the pitch.
Colin Holmes in for Ryan Mellon is the only change on the Tyrone team from the last day.
Good point Gman - even for the piece on Red, it was mostly Pat Roe and Paul Bealin who they talked to.
Suggested earlier there’d be no changes and glad to see there hasnt been. C’mon the model ta fuck.
Mellon pulled out just before throw-in the last day and Holmes actually started. Mellon did come on near the end though. Didn’t see Tom Mooney in The Echo’s 24-page pull out but that’s not to say he’s not jumping on the bandwagon elsewhere in the paper. That said there’s some good stuff in the local press although Alan Aherne confirmed what a nerd and geek he is by recounting some memories of the 82 Wexford football games he witnessed in the flesh between 1997 and 2005 out of 85 that the team played in total. He also picked a best of team from 1997 to 2005 (not including those who are still involved in the panel now):
John Cooper,
Richie Purcell, John O’Gorman, Darragh Breen,
Pat Forde, Barry Kirwan, Leigh O’Brien,
John Harrington, Willie Carley,
Diarmuid Kinsella, Mick Mahon, Jim Byrne,
Scott Doran, Jason Lawlor, John Hegarty.
In fairness, that’s quite a team.
some full forward line anyway. When did Billy Dodd retire?
[quote=“Gman”]does Mooney have his annual piece for the county teams bandage? I’m sure you were waiting on that all season long!
No surprises with the team. Colfer played on the edge of the square the last day anyway, with Lyng and Forde inside and Banville and Red on the 40. Byrne will take the roving role I presume.
anyone read Tony Dempsey giving out about Joe Brolly and how the media arent giving us enough respect? Who gives a fook Tony, we earn respect by results and how we do, and we are doing well, so the respect will come. I couldnt give a flying fook if every pundit goes against us and says we are shite as long as we win. Results count, opinions dont. People are too paranoid about what Brolly et al are saying, if ye go to the matches then you wont hear him talking! On the way home after the Armagh game we stopped off at Jack Whites, and met a couple of lads I knew, and they were giving out coz they heard Brolly and O’Rourke saying Armagh lost it, and not Wexford won it. Apart from the fact that they were going on hearsay, I said, who gives a flying fook, we’re in an All Ireland semi.
I’m glad I havent heard much from players or Ryan in the last few days either. Keep the head down and leave the talking for the pitch.[/quote]
I’m more impressed that Tony Dempsey even knows who Joe Brolly is.
Anyway I’m agreeing with Niall Cahalane about ye’re prospects on Sunday.
Christ, look at what Croke Park have done with all their fucking around with the championship format. Wexford in the AIFF! … God help us all.
Mind you; we won’t have to listen to Larry singing this time, so I suppose we can’t be too moany about it
I reckon 1995 or 96.
This is the Wexford team that lost to Tyrone 2-10 to 10 in the 1994 Div.3 League play-off-
J.Cooper, P.OGorman, J.OGorman, D.Stafford, C.Roche, J.Dunne, B.OGorman, J.Harrington, P.Harrington, B.Kirwan, S.Doran, F.Byrne, D.Berry, N.Guinan, B.Dodd.
[quote=“Mairegangaire”]I’m more impressed that Tony Dempsey even knows who Joe Brolly is.
Anyway I’m agreeing with Niall Cahalane about ye’re prospects on Sunday.
Christ, look at what Croke Park have done with all their fucking around with the championship format. Wexford in the AIFF! … God help us all.
Mind you; we won’t have to listen to Larry singing this time, so I suppose we can’t be too moany about it[/quote]
Larry? O’Gorman? 'Twas Senie Flood and Tom Dempsey who did the singing in 1997 after the Leinster Final.
There’s definitely some irony in the bold part given Cork’s display last weekend!