John Hegarty’s first year as manager of the Wexford footballers hasn’t been without its problems but they are still playing championship football and this weekend travel to Navan for the Tailteann Cup quarterfinals.
The new championship has been notoriously slow to thin the field but the rate has picked up and by Sunday night, only four teams will remain. Hegarty is an enthusiast for the Tier 2 championship and the possibilities it offers to competing counties.
After finishing a frustrating league campaign with a mid-table finish in Division Four, Wexford lost a competitive Leinster championship tussle with Laois and waited for the rest of the season to begin.
“Was it difficult to get them back for the Tailteann Cup?” asks Hegarty. “The answer is ‘not at all’ because that level of frustration was there. We felt we had bullets left unfired – things that we hadn’t had the opportunity to show. We ended up with possibly the toughest group in Fermanagh, Antrim and Leitrim. There was no game we were guaranteed to win.
“But if we wanted to gauge progress, this was the ideal opportunity. We drew one, won one and lost one but we were doing things right for slightly longer in each game. That’s progress.”
The team qualified in third place from their group and last weekend travelled to Tullamore and recorded a decisive win over a well favoured Offaly side.
Wexford’s manager had a distinguished playing career as a forward for the county over an 11-year span until 2006. He was also a member of the memorable UCD Sigerson Cup winning team in 1996.
Drawing on those times, he explains why the Tailteann Cup is doubly beneficial for teams, compared with the years he remembers, which encompassed pure knockout football. One defeat and the season was over.
“Right the way back to when I played, the teams in the championship that were successful were together two, three, even four months longer in the old system. If you were a team like Wexford, trying to make progress, you always felt each year that you were starting farther and farther behind the best counties.
“They were going into September and you were often out in May and you wouldn’t see your county colleagues again as a group until November or December.
“Meanwhile, these teams were building morale and developing their skill set – even improving their physical fitness. On a basic level, that’s a real benefit of the Tailteann Cup and the new system.”
Starting off last autumn with the county footballers, he and his management were conscious of the need to get the county behind the team.
Hurling has always been a dominant presence in the county and it is unusual to have the footballers still going a few weeks after the hurlers have exited the championship.
Coincidentally, Wexford’s annus mirabilis 15 years ago, which ended with an All-Ireland semi-final against eventual winners Tyrone, featured an extraordinary comeback win over Meath, Saturday’s opponents.
“When we came in, we were keen to try to develop that base support – to bring people back to football. There was a time, maybe a decade ago when the footballers were regularly performing well into the championship, culminating in the 2008 All-Ireland semi-final.
“We wanted to restore a bit of pride in Wexford, including among our own people. We are a dual county and almost every club is a dual club. If you look at the current hurling panel, Lee Chin, Oisín Foley, Conor Devitt, Liam Óg McGovern, Conor Hearne, Simon Donohoe – all of those lads played football for Wexford before they played hurling for the county.”
There are no illusions about the task ahead. Meath have a richer footballing pedigree and are the highest-ranking county in the competition even if they were squeezed out of Sam Maguire after finishing sixth in Division Two.
“People looking in would say,” according to Hegarty, “that Meath are one of the traditional stronger powers in football – and that Wexford is a hurling county. Since the 2000s, though, we would never have feared Meath.”
Recent evidence tends to support this lack of apprehension. Although the counties haven’t met for 10 years, the record over the last 20 seasons of both league and championship throws up a surprising statistic. Of seven meetings, three championship and four league, Wexford have won five.
Their manager is, however, not reading too much into that fact. “We may not be carrying any baggage into this but at the end of the day, we are a Division Four team and they are in Division Two.”
The core message remains one of improving, rising through the leagues and creating a new status for themselves.
“We’re fighting to ensure that Wexford supporters have two teams to follow. Maybe that’s what this opportunity is.”
