Meeting tomorrow night about revising the senior championship structure in both codes and reducing them from 16 teams to 12. Thereâs loads of filler in the hurling and the winner has generally been Oulart, Rathnure or St Martinâs over the past decade or so (bar Faythe Harriers glorious triumph in 2001). The football is far, far more competitive and Gusserane were said to have a motion / proposal suggesting two groups of 5 and one group of 6 and maintaining a 16 team structure. Apparently theyâve withdrawn and the mighty Sarsfields are now going to push for the retention of a 16 team structure for football though Iâm not fully sure what exact format theyâre going to propose. I want to formally place on record my best wishes to the Sarsfields representatives, Alan Aherne, Paul Harrington et al ahead of the meeting. As an aside - croppy_boy, I will have to eliminate you if you insist on asking certain Sarsfields personnel you work with if a âBandageâ is known to them.
Thatâs a scurrilous remark, I barely work at all.
I forecast fun at this eveningâs meeting. This could go any way which means that amid all the confusion and counter-proposal after counter-proposal the Co Board will probably have no option but to revert to the current system.
Apparently the U-21 Championships are to be played off on Monday evenings again this year. Complete madness as itâs automatically ruling out any young lads living away during the week.
It eventually had to be reduced to 12 alright-the fun starts when theyâre setting about demoting teams.
Has to be done though-for the good of the club championship.
Anxiously awaiting news from tonightâs meeting.
Hurlers are at home to Dublin on Saturday in Gorey in the Walsh Cup semi-final, while the footballers open their Division 3 campaign against Louth in Drogheda on Sunday.
Just reading the Wexford People online and Jasonâs saying the doorâs open for Forde to come back in but heâs not scheduled to return any time soon. Adrian Morrissey is out for Sunday after getting a shoulder or collar bone injury last week - he was one of the better early season performers so will be a loss. We have Ciaran Lyng and Shane Roche available after they were representing their colleges over the past few weeks. Iâll probably shoot up to Drogheda to see what the story is on Sunday.
Morrissey looked badly injured when he went off. Any word on David Walsh Bandage?
yeah, not good, not good at all
Cheers Buddy - will you be making the trip to Drogheda on Sunday?
Heâll be grand, I believe.
The orginal proposal went through apparently. Just heard and waiting for further confirmation regarding what else was discussed at the meeting.
Yes, the original proposal was successful. I wasnât too bothered about the potential success or otherwise of Sarsfieldsâ counter proposal as the fact remained that weâd more than likely win the championship this year whether there were 12 or 16 teams involved. I think the point is though that thereâs not much point tweaking the structure if the games still donât take place in the summer alongside inter county activity.
As for the meeting last night, I am reliably informed by somebody who was reliably informed that it was a done deal beforehand, that all attempts at debate were stifled, and that the management had been ordered to vote en bloc in favour even though some of them were opposed to it.
It was subsequently quite amusing that, after getting their motion passed, then and only then did they announce that they felt Rathnure shouldnât be relegated from Intermediate as they are already in Junior. They asked the delegates to agree and of course they did, so we now have 17 Intermediate hurling teams. So much for sticking to whatâs in a motion. Rathnure are gas - they canât be promoted from Intermediate if they win, and now they canât be relegated if theyâre the worst team in it.
A dictatorship of habtards in charge of Wexford GAA. Gas.
Wexford (NFL v Louth) - 1. Anthony Masterson, 2. Joey Wadding, 3. David Walsh, 4. Brian Malone, 5. Niall Murphy, 6. David Murphy, 7. Aindreas Doyle 8. DaithĂ Waters, 9. Brendan Doyle, 10. Collie Byrne, 11. Redmond Barry, 12. Pat Naughter, 13. Ben Brosnan, 14. Adrian Flynn, 15. Paddy Byrne
That has to be the worst set of forwards starting for Wexford in many a year, a lot resting on Ben Brosnans shoulders to get scores. Anyone else heading up to the game? looks like its going to be grim viewing
i heard naughter played well last week, still hard to know, dont rate collie, decent club player. Paddy effin byrne i just dont see it.
Dublin won in Gorey today by 2-17 to 2-13. They played the last 20 minutes with 13 men and still held out. Donât really have any other details at the moment but they were without their lads involved with colleges like Brady, Gough, Rushe and Treacy and I donât think OâCallaghan was playing either. As I say, Iâm all for giving lads a go but not at the expense of some of the players Bonnar has dropped.
There doesnât seem to be much scoring potential in our football team for tomorrow all right. Louth have got to the OâByrne Cup final for the second year in a row and defeated Kildare last week so they should give us an early indicator as to where we stand. Adrian Morrissey is a big miss in the half forward line - it looks fairly weak now.
I went to see Good Counsel College getting well beaten by St Keirans College in Carlow today,3-18 to 1-08 was the final score on a day when GCC were outclassed all over the field and could easily have lost by a bit more,only Matthew O Hanlon who is training with Wexford seniors hurled up to the standard of Keirans,had Good Counsel started him at centre back instead of midfield they might have fared better,St Keirans have a good outfit scattered with very good hurlers like Killian Buckley,Padraig Walsh,John Power,Tucker Hanrahan,James Gannon,Aidan O Dowd etc and will win Leinster id reckon for the first time since 2003,St Peters College were beaten today too by Castecomer CS ending all Wexford involvement in Colleges hurling and football for the Year.
OâHanlon was excellent at full back for the minors last year - I didnât know he was training with the seniors. Bonnar was on South East Radio there talking about âhaving no hurling done yetâ blah blah blah. Here Bonnar, stop talking bollox.
Another poor performance by Wexford today. Some of the backs were all right enough but we were outplayed at midfield for the most part. Still, we managed to get a fair bit of possession without taking our chances. It was absolutely incredible that Ryan looked at some of the forwards for so long. Lyng and Roche were given 15 and 5 minutes respectively and we were way too slow to bring on Eric Bradley also. Very disappointing.
I wasnât that disappointed despite losing. The team looks like they are in a lot better shape than this time last year and iâd be confident that we will win a fair few matches in this division, especially at home where we have four games (assuming the best team starts from now on). Iâd agree with Bandage re the subs, what the hell was he doing waiting so long to bring on the lads. They all looked sharp (albeit eric looks like he is carrying a few pounds) and if theyâd been introduced earlier we could probably have won. I thought the defence was good today, especially David Murphy who seems to be back to his best. The midfield on the other hand was abysmal, Boccy being particularly brutal. In the forwards Red despite scoring two points was very poor, while Naughter and Byrne were largely anonymous. For the next day Bradley, Lyng and Roche all have to start, we canât afford to lose anymore matches and Offaly aint going to be pushovers.
Iâve always rated Paddy Keenan but the other midfielder kicked three points from play. Four of the starting forwards tend to shirk the physical exchanges, which isnât ideal when up against tight marking and committed defenders. I thought David Murphy was our best player too and Wadding and Walsh werenât too bad either. I didnât see any other positives really and wouldnât be optimistic about future prospects in truth.
I hopin the return of Lyng, Roche and Banville (named as sub today)to the forwards and Bradley to midfield will improve things. The defence isnât shaping up too bad either. I suppose the fact that the teams we will playing in this division arenât going to be world beaters is also giving me hope. Get a few wins under our belts and try and build some momentum. The offaly game is going to be crucial, win it and we could be back on trackâŚ
Team for the weekend v. offaly
- Anthony Masterson, 2. Joey Wadding, 3. David Walsh, 4. Brian Malone, 5. Niall Murphy, 6. David Murphy, 7. Aindreas Doyle, 8. DaithĂ Waters, 9. Collie Byrne, 10. Pat Naughter, 11. Redmond Barry, 12. Adrian Flynn, 13. Ben Brosnan, 14. CiarĂĄn Lyng, 15. Paddy Byrne.
Boccy dropped, thought bradley would have been in rather than collie.
is this game in the park?