Pearse Stadium in February is nobody’s idea of the Seychelles. The wind carries icy vengeance in off the Atlantic with such extreme prejudice that it’s little wonder Galway’s home attendances were routinely the lowest in hurling’s Division 1A.
Official figures in the league are always a moveable enough feast, but if we say Galway have generally seen just over 6,000 through the gate for an average fixture over the past five seasons, it’s unlikely anyone will argue the point too forcefully.
Sometimes they dip below it – only 4,411 turned up for Dublin in 2014 – and sometimes they go higher. But only twice since 2012 have they gone above 7,000. The first was the league opener in 2013, a rematch of the previous year’s All-Ireland draw and replay against Kilkenny. Official numbers went out the window that day as they eventually threw open the gates and let late-comers in for free. But nobody doubted the 7,000 was breached.
The only other time was against Cork in 2015, a top-of-the-league clash the day before St Patrick’s Day pulling 7,864.
Relegation to Division 1B ought to have meant a shelling for those kinds of numbers but then Wexford came to town a fortnight ago.
Wexford, who have to travel the furthest to get there of all the hurling counties. Wexford, who haven’t won in Galway since the early 1980s and haven’t beaten Galway home, away or anywhere since 2007.
Wexford, dear old harmlessly popular Wexford, who brought a vocal chunk of a 7,006 crowd and went home with their hearts full and promotion theirs to lose.
Water-treaders
When
Davy Fitzgerald
and Seamus McEnaney were appointed within a fortnight of each other as hurling and football managers last October, the task facing them both was bracing and it was clear-cut. In both codes Wexford had become water-treaders of the least inspiring kind. Their followers could generally rely on them to beat whoever they were supposed to beat and to lose to whoever they were supposed to lose to.
Over a two-year stretch the list of teams who lost to Wexford in league and championship read Leitrim, London, Waterford, Wicklow, Limerick, Tipperary, Down and Carlow in football, and Kerry, Laois (twice), Offaly, Westmeath and Cork in hurling. Even the hurlers’ win over Cork last July said more about the vanquished than the victors.
Worse even than the results, the atmosphere around Wexford GAA had grown sour.
On the football side, David Power struggled in his first job in charge of senior players and couldn’t transfer his fine track record at underage with Tipperary across. As for the hurlers, Liam Dunne had five years of raging against the machine and only the occasional big day to show for it. And as for a relationship between the two codes, there was none.
Adjacent pitches
Now the two squads train on adjacent pitches at a centre of excellence in Ferns a couple of nights a week. After McEnaney and Fitzgerald whistle the sessions to a close, the two panels regularly eat together. There are hurlers among the footballers and ballers folded through the sticksmen. The coldness that was there before is gone. Does that matter? McEnaney reckons it does.
“I think it’s brilliant that the hurling is going really well,” he says on a late-night phonecall while beating back northwards to Carrickmacross after training. “Because that’s keeping the footballers on their toes. It certainly has an effect. I see it at first-hand, the work Davy Fitz is doing. We work alongside each other in Ferns, and you can see they’re working extremely hard. On our side, we know we have to match that, and we are matching it.
“I was delighted for them when they beat Galway. And I was delighted to see it because it adds an edge to what we’re doing with the footballers. It’s in anybody’s nature that you wouldn’t want to be thought as lagging behind the other group. I can tell you for a fact that it keeps a cutting edge with the footballers.”
Different challenges
Though both men have different challenges on their hands, they were faced with similar issues to begin with.
Both squads had physical work to do – the hurlers were too bulked up in the upper body, the footballers were far from the fittest panel around. The year may still feel shiveringly young but by next week McEnaney and Fitzgerald will be four months into physical sessions that have given them the edge over their opponents in the early part of the league.
But as much as building them up physically, the enthusiasm and positivity of both men has had its say too.
Where many people looked at the hurlers’ opening fixtures against Limerick and Galway and winced, Fitzgerald knew that given the work they would have done by the time the games came around, there was a chance they’d be motoring better than the others.
Instead of sheltering the players from the threat of his two promotion rivals, he sold them on the opportunity playing them early presented. In both games they came from a distance back – six points down against Limerick, seven against Galway. In both games they dominated the closing stages, outscoring Limerick by 1-7 to 0-2 over the final 20 minutes and Galway by 1-6 to 0-1 over the closing 15. You want to know why Wexford tails are up? The manner of the wins has had as much impact as the fact of them.
On the football side of things, McEnaney has had a slightly different job. Where Fitzgerald wants his players to strive to greater things, McEnaney needs his men to reject their current surroundings. Wexford were running the Dubs to a kick of a ball only five years ago and a core of those players remain. They shouldn’t be in Division Four. Getting out of it is the least they can do.
Commitment
Last weekend against Waterford they played well into the teeth of a gale in the first half to be level at half-time but made desperate hard work of seeing it out after the break. McEnaney could be overheard afterwards handing down a light laceration to his charges – the phrase “that shite won’t be good enough, boys” echoed through the corridors under the stand in Innovate Wexford Park.
“Giving this sort of commitment, to get any enjoyment out of it you’d nearly want to be winning every game. It fairly shortens the journey when you’re winning games. When you’re in Division Four and when you’ve been in it for a year already and haven’t got out of it, you start realising it – especially if you’re in your late 20s, as a few of our lads are.
“When the county board asked me to meet them, I went for a brief chat and to be honest I wasn’t really intending to go for the job. And then the committee I meet were very enthusiastic about Wexford football and I got permission from Dermot Deveraux to ring around seven or eight of the senior players. I probably rang 10 of them. I couldn’t believe their enthusiasm, their hunger for success, the belief that was within them.”
Assuming all goes to plan, the Waterloo for both managers will come on successive weekends at the beginning of June. If the footballers beat Carlow, the Dubs will come to Wexford Park. If the hurlers beat whoever comes out of the round-robin, Kilkenny will come to town seven days later.
Only then will we really come to know what has been achieved over the past month.
