Wexford GAA 2010

Sport
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Loch Garman v An DĂșn 28Ăș Feabhra 2010 2nd Round Allianz League
Dathanna: Corcra is Órga (Purple & Gold)

  1. Dermot Flynn (Rathnure)
  2. Eoin Doyle (Shelmaliers)
  3. Paul Roche (Oulart-the-Ballagh)
  4. Keith Rossiter (Oulart-the-Ballagh)
  5. Darren Stamp (Oulart-the-Ballagh)
  6. CiarĂĄn Kenny (Buffers Alley)
  7. Richie Kehoe (Faythe Harriers) :clap:
  8. PJ Nolan (Askamore)
  9. Malachy Travers (Ballyboden-St. Enda’s)
  10. Andrew Shore (Davidstown-Courtnacuddy)
  11. Willie Doran (Buffers Alley)
  12. Diarmuid Lyng (St. Martin’s)
  13. Rory Jacob (Oulart-the-Ballagh)
  14. Tomás Waters (St. Martin’s)
  15. Jim Berry (Faythe-Harriers) :clap:

Fir Ionad:
16. Noel Carton (Cloughbawn)
17. Barry Kenny (Buffers Alley)
18. Darren Kehoe (HWH Bunclody)
19. Greg Jacob (Davidstown-Courtnacuddy)
20. Paul Nolan (Duffry Rovers)
21. Colm Farrell (HWH Bunclody)
22. Darren Nolan (Oulart-the-Ballagh)
23. Stephen Banville (Shelmaliers)
24. Peter Atkinson (HWH Bunclody)

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Strongest squad we’ve had in the League in two or three years.

Anyone got any idea when EOin Quigley will be making a return?

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Bunclody definitely concentrated on the hurling way more than the football alright. Thing is they had loads of success in Football in underage, feck all in the hurling.

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it strange alright, they were always a serious outfit underage, we only bet them once in all our years and that was in u-21 and by the skin our teeth

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Wexford (O’Byrne Cup Shield v Carlow) -
Jason Russell,
David Walsh,
Joey Wadding,
Damien Carter,
Kieran Kennedy,
Eric Bradley,
Dylan Kehoe,
DaithĂ­ Waters,
Brendan Doyle, :clap:
CiarĂĄn Deely,
Collie Byrne, :blink:
Pat Naughter,
Ben Brosnan,
Adrian Flynn,
PJ Banville.

Collie Byrne is becoming the footballers equivalent to DOC. No-one can understand how he gets his game, he never plays even average and yet he always seems to get picked.

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[quote=“croppy_boy, post: 394763”]Collie Byrne is becoming the footballers equivalent to DOC. No-one can understand how he gets his game, he never plays even average and yet he always seems to get picked.
[/quote]
Sorry to rain on the parade but the same point can be applied to Boccy at times

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how dare you! his bocness has and always will be picked for his size.

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:guns: :guns: :guns:

I’ll admit that but at least Boccy has played a few good games for the county - particularly in our qualifier run in 2008.

When has Collie ever played well?

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[quote=“croppy_boy, post: 394766”]When has Collie ever played well?
[/quote]
Emmmmmmmmmm


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Oops, sorry Croppy Boy. I take your point GMan, but traditionally the Halfway has been a football club, though producing excellent hurlers from time to time (Eamonn and Colm Kehoe as examples). There has been success in hurling in recent years and thats fantastic, but as Pikeman points out, there was a lot of fairly recent underage success in football and I was hearing up to 2 years ago from lads at home that we were not far off challenging for the senior championship. Its a great club and deserves success.

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THE blonde fashion beauty who ended Peter Andre’s post-Jordan vow of celibacy today pulls the covers off their secret three-month fling.

Speaking exclusively to the News of the World, ex-model Maddy Ford reveals how the Mysterious Girl star swept her off her feet only eight days after his divorce.

Maddy, 30, couldn’t believe her luck as Peter wooed her at a party after seeing her on Facebook - and romped with her at his Brighton home, a friend’s house and even in a SHOWER at a VIDEO SHOOT.

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Anybody at either of our games today?

I’m relying on the RTE website but they’re reporting that the hurlers defeated Down by 2-23 to 1-12, with Waters and Berry getting the goals.

They also report that we lost to Carlow in the O’Byrne Cup Shield final by 1-15 to 2-8 after being 2-7 to 0-5 ahead at half time.

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The way they do the training is 45mins hurling and 45mins football on one night, bit stupid if ya ask me!!!

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ryan out, threw away an 8 pt lead,played lads no one has ever heard of

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Pretty interesting interview with Damien Fitzhenry in the Wexford People this week. He basically questions the attitude of some of the younger players and he’s still pretty sore about John Meyler’s treatment too - he was supportive of Meyler at the time he was removed as Gavin and Gavin 2 would have revealed. I think he’s right in that some of our players have a bit of a Billy Big Biscuits attitude - being on the county panel and scoring some little slappers in The Stores is considered a trophy in itself. Fair play to them, I say.

[b]Fitzy, legend of the game

Dave Devereux talks to Wexford hurling’s star goalkeeper Damien Fitzhenry, who has retired from the county scene[/b]

http://www.wexfordpeople.ie/multimedia/archive/00512/497565b2-85cf-4ac8-_512834t.jpg

EXPRESSIONS like ‘sporting great’ and ‘legend of the game’ can be vastly overused and thrown around flippantly by commentators and fans alike. But they’re the sort of accolades that rightfully reflect the impact Damien Fitzhenry had on Wexford hurling, a man who richly deserves to be mentioned in the same breath as heroes of old like Nickey Rackard, Tony Doran and Dan Quigley.

The netminder, who called it a day from the inter-county scene last week, spent 17 years in the purple and gold of Wexford, serving the county with great dinstinction and unquestionably always gave his all when he crossed the white line into battle.

Growing up in Kiltealy in the shadow of the Blackstairs mountains, the young Fitzhenry had GAA running through his veins. In fact, the Fitzhenrys could have fielded their own team, with Damien being the youngest of 15, ten boys and five girls, and all their lives were entwined in Gaelic games.

The name Fitzhenry is synonymous with the Duffry Rovers club and the team was backboned by the clan when they went on their glorious run of winning eight Senior football titles in nine years between 1986 and 1994, including a remarkable seven-in-a-row.

Damien, also a talented footballer, won four of those county titles with the club, but it’s with the small ball and camán that Fitzy made his mark on the wider scale, and he’s regarded as one of, if not the best, goalkeepers in the country over the past 20 years.

Given his upbringing, Fitzhenry says the GAA was always going to play a leading role in his life.

‘I grew up not knowing anything different. I’ve nine brothers and five sisters, and they all at some stage would have played. Obviously all of them with the Duffry Rovers and six or seven of them with Wexford, both hurling and football and camogie. Tina, my sister, played in two All-Ireland camogie finals. I didn’t miss out on any GAA anyway and obviously because I was the youngest I was going to have to get working on what all of the rest of them had done before me.’

Damien says his love of Gaelic games was nurtured by his parents, Mark and Nancy, and names them as one of the biggest influences on his career.

‘None of this would have come about without the help of our parents at home and all of my brothers and sisters will row in behind me on that one. They have travelled thousands and thousands of miles, not only in Wexford but all over Ireland, bringing us to matches and following us to matches, and a lot of what happened to us is down to my mother and father,’ he said.

The Duffry Rovers man made his debut for the Wexford Senior side in the National Hurling League quarter-final against Laois in 1993 after graduating straight from the Minor side, and has been the Wexford number one ever since, until announcing his retirement last week.

In his first year with the Senior team the Slaneysiders, under the late Christy Keogh, were showing promise, and eventually went down to Cork in the league final after a mammoth three matches. The seeds were being sown for Fitzy’s biggest day in 1996 when Wexford captured the holy grail, the All-Ireland title.

'A lot of the credit for '96 would have to reach back as far as Christy Keogh. He brought a great blend of youth and experience together in '93 and '94. Then Liam Griffin came in and just tweaked a few things, got everyone going the one way and what happened then was ‘96.’

Fitzhenry’s retirement from inter-county hurling has severed the final link with Wexford’s last All-Ireland winning team and, unsurprisingly, Damien names that triumph in 1996 as his finest hour.

Being a relative spring chicken to the setup, Fitzy admits that he was lucky that success came to him quite quickly and wouldn’t have believed at the time if someone had told him it would be his last All-Ireland win.

‘The likes of George O’Connor were nearly coming to an end when I was starting out. Him and fellas like Billy Byrne and Tom Dempsey had toiled, worked so hard for Wexford for years to get something, so for them to get it near the end of their careers and for me to get it at the start of my career was a complete contrast. It was a fantastic thing for the lads but from my point of view I was thinking “this is great, I’m only here three years and we’re after winning an All-Ireland”. It was the first in 28 years but unfortunately we’re half way there again now at 14 years.’ In addition to an All-Ireland, Fitzhenry also won three Leinster medals, as well as All Star awards in 1997 and 2004, with many pundits and fans alike believing he deserved more, but the modest goalkeeper isn’t concerned about personal plaudits.

‘Individual awards don’t really bother me. At the end of the day it was fantastic to get two All Stars but what would have been more important to me would be to win. In 2004 I got an All Star but what was more special for me was that the 30 in the panel got a Leinster medal that year. There was an article last year on a player who won an All Star and he was asked what was his highlight of the year and what was he hoping for next year and the first thing he said was that he was hoping to win another All Star next year. I couldn’t understand that – for me it’s more important to be a team player than to win individual awards,’ he said.

Fitzhenry, who spends a few hours a week coaching children in primary schools, says Liam Griffin was the best manager he worked under with Wexford but believes Rory Kinsella and Seamus Barron also deserve great credit for the 1996 success, and said Kinsella seamlessly continued the work when he took over at the helm in '97, when Wexford retained their Leinster crown.

Fitzhenry also singled out another manager for praise, saying that John Meyler is the best he’s worked under since the heady days of the mid-Nineties. He was devastated when the Tacumshane man became another high-profile victim of so-called player power.

‘That man put hours and hours into it, from driving from Cork to training, to being on the phone, to helping lads behind the scenes. The way he was treated was an absolute scandal and an absolute disaster. I came out in favour of John Meyler at the time, it was absolutely nothing to do with me, the way he was treated was absolutely scandalous,’ he said.

‘Probably the biggest regret I would have over the years I played for Wexford was the way John Meyler was dealt with. To see a man that was so interested in the game to be dealt with in that way – that would be the lowest point in my hurling career with Wexford.’

For the past few years, Fitzhenry has been the elder statesman of the team, like George O’Connor and Billy Byrne were when he started out in the early Nineties, but he says seniority isn’t always respected in the dressingroom.

'There’s a certain breed of player that would listen to you and take on board what you’re saying, but there’s also a breed of player that think we don’t really have to listen to this man, we know he’s been there but we don’t have to listen to him. That has to be worked on, the players have to go in there for one sole purpose – and that’s Wexford hurling.

‘The sooner the better that we get everybody working, and putting the shoulder behind the wheel in the one direction to get Wexford hurling back where it should be and where it was a few years ago. Until that happens we’re not going to bear any results for a while.’

So does he see any light at the end of the tunnel for Wexford hurling?

‘There’s no doubt that it’s going to pick up but it’s going to take time, and that is no disrespect to the players there at the minute. I have worked hard with those lads for the last few years but I think it’s going to take a few years to get the blend back right again. There are a few Minor teams coming up so they’d need two or three years to get back there, but if the work is put in, in two or three years Wexford will be back where they should be.’ The 35-year-old painstakingly thought about continuing his voyage with Wexford for one more year but in the end decided that he couldn’t give the commitment and dedication needed for the job.

'I was thinking to myself – will I give it another year? But if I had I’d still have to give up next year. It has to happen some time.

'I thought long and hard about it, probably for two or three months. It was an unbelievably hard decision. If you take in the Minor I’ve been hurling since 1991 for Wexford. I suppose I’ve given unparallelled service to Wexford. Everything else in my life took a back seat over those 20 years and that’s what’s expected. That’s what I thought was expected of me and that’s what I gave for as long as I could give it.

‘Unfortunately this year I didn’t think I was going to be able to give the full 100 per cent commitment. With 90 per cent commitment you won’t reap any rewards and that’s the way it is, that’s what it takes,’ he said.

After making 57 championship appearances, the Wexford shot-stopper was only three short of joining Christy Ring and Davy Fitzgerald in breaking the 60 barrier, but Fitzhenry says things like that wouldn’t even cross his mind.

‘If you’re interested in breaking records and doing these things your focus on the main objective, which is Wexford hurling, has left. If you’re thinking I’ll go for another year and maybe get three or four games and be up near Christy Ring, that’s not the way I work or the person that I am.’

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Shit enough article by Tom Humphries in The Times yesterday but throwing it up for Wexford GAA fans’ consumption. Seems like Georgie’s happy enough organising hurling blitzes on the quay front and long puck competitions on the Saltee Islands. :lol:

Wexford building from ground zero. But building nonetheless

TOM HUMPHRIES on 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.

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Six years after the county’s last great ambush of Kilkenny in a Leinster final,

Leinster Semi Tom, me old mucker.

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How badly would the Div 2 hurling be hurting Wexford at the moment?

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Twouldn’t be good anyway.
IF it’s the case that we don’t get out of the division for the next couple of years, and we are trying to bring our decent batch of minors/U21’s through, Division 2 hurling isn’t the place to develop them.

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MASSIVE blow for Wexford’s hurling prospects this season:

Greg Jacob broke his finger in a Wexford ‘B’ versus Wexford U-21 game over the weekend.