TIME STOOD STILL in Ferns this week.
As the days passed after Sunday’s county final victory, the celebrations were still going strong. Work could wait. These were rare times.
Six-time intermediate champions and five-time junior winners, the St Aidan’s club are the kingpins of Wexford senior hurling for the first time.
On Tuesday, hundreds packed into the Courtyard, the local watering hole, to toast a piece of history.
That’s what happens when a club waits 136 years experience a win of this magnitude.
In a flash, their five-game winless streak in senior county finals fell away.
Paul Morris answers the phone from Alvar in Portugal. He was due to fly out at 7.30am on Monday but understandably put back his flight by a couple of days.
“I wasn’t going to jet off Monday after playing in a county final and missing all of that,” he tells The42.
When he was in the airport before boarding on Wednesday, he opened up Snapchat. Tuesday night had rolled into Wednesday morning for a few hardcores on the team.
Morris could only laugh.
“The way I look at it is what’s the point in doing all the training, going to the gym, doing all the stuff behind the scenes if you’re not going to enjoy it for three or four days after?
“What’s the point of the whole thing?”
For the 32-year-old, it’s a moment he’s been waiting for all his life. He first lined out for the club’s first team in the intermediate championship back in 2007. He won the county title that year and went on to reach the Leinster intermediate final.
In 2013, they reached the club’s first senior decider in 44 years. They were beaten by an Oulart-the-Ballagh team in their pomp. Morris and his team-mates expected more opportunities would arise over the next few years.
But the years ticked by and Ferns seemed to be heading in the wrong direction. In 2017, they survived a relegation play-off by the skin of their teeth.
“Don’t get me wrong you go nine years without doing something, is there a doubt at the back of your head that, ‘Janey, can we really do this?
“Of course there is, there’s little dark words going on in the back of your mind questioning everything you’re doing. I did know we had a good enough group of players to go and do it. The talent most questionably wasn’t in question.
“We had seven lads involved in the Wexford senior hurling panel and nearly everyone else has played with Wexford at some stage in their career whether it was minor, U21 or adult level. So the experience and quality was there but it was just trying to find our best form.”
At the beginning of 2022, it had been nine years since they’d even experienced county final day. Then things clicked.
Declan Byrne, James Tonks, Ciaran Roberts, Johnny and Tommy Dwyer, Ian Byrne and Morris were still around from 2013. They gelled with an infusion of young talent.
Morris’s own father stepped aside as manager and Pat Bennett, who had been coach for the previous three years, took charge. He had a small management team with just Frank Devereux (coach) and Paddy Rossiter (S&C) assisting him.
“Pat is probably the most passionate hurling man I’ve ever come across,” he says. “If you were to talk to anyone about Pat, the word would be a ‘gentleman’ but he brought a different side to him this year which was ruthless.
“So if lads were performing, he didn’t care if it was 10 or 20 minutes into the match, lads were coming off and it was next man in. I think it made a massive difference this year.
“That ruthlessness brought an extra 10 or 15% out in everybody, because they knew that whether it was me or a young lad, if you weren’t performing or working, you were going to come off. That for me was the biggest noticeable change in Pat this year.”
They lost key man Gavin Bailey to an ACL injury before the start of the season. But three wins to start off the group stage gave them momentum.
After “an excellent performance” and seven-point quarter-final win over Glynn-Barntown, Morris “just felt there was something nestling in the waters after that. You knew the buzz in the club was really good, lads were in great form.”
They showed their resolve in the semi-final when they overturned a six-point deficit on 53 minutes against Rapparees, to force extra-time where they prevailed by a point.
“It just felt like something special was going to happen but you were trying to blank that out as well coming into the final.”
When a pair of Joe Coleman frees hauled St Martin’s level as second-half stoppage-time was signalled in the final, Ferns again refused to bow. Chris O’Connor was only on the pitch three minutes when he latched onto a breaking ball and sent them in front.
Then 37-year-old Johnny Dwyer put over a magnificent sideline cut from 60 metres, writing his name into Ferns folklore.
When the final whistled sounded, Morris admits “it was an experience and feeling that I’ve never felt before.”
He continues, “Even though we have won stuff, we won Leinster with Wexford in 2019 and we won U21s, intermediates and colleges stuff, but after that match I was actually in shock.
“It felt like a dream. The first person I seen was Gavin Bailey and John Tonks came running over, one of the club men. All I could say was, ‘Is this real? Is this happening?’ It was that sense of shock.
“It’s something I haven’t actually experienced before. Looking back now, man, it was just so, so special. The feeling satisfaction, words couldn’t describe it really.
“When you see grown men crying you know there’s something very significant after happening. I met some of the older club members and there were pure tears of joy in their faces, they were almost shaking after the match they were so happy. It was a bit surreal, no-one could believe that we actually did it.
“On the way home we actually stopped in the graveyard because we lost a couple of key club members this year. Tom Guinan and Jack Byrne, guys that would have sold tickets, coached lads underage, just pure and utter club men.
“We lost the two of them this year so to bring the cup to them…Another guy like Seamie Murphy was a huge coach underage to all of the players that are in the group at the moment, Seamie passed away a few years back.
“You nearly want to do it for the likes of them because you know how happy they’d be looking down on everything unfolding and what went on.”
The few days after will stick with him forever.
“It was the biggest carnival atmosphere. The whole town was out. Even the people that would only be sort of into hurling, as such, and wouldn’t be that much involved in it. I saw people there I hadn’t seen in so long.
“We were outside the Courtyard the night of the game in Ferns and they had us up on the side of a truck, (club chairman) Des O’Neill had a few words with different lads and we sang a few songs. It was unbelievable. We marched down through the town and there were red and white flares going. It was special, very special.
“The Monday and Tuesday are nearly more enjoyable because the Sunday was such carnage that you hardly got to talk to anyone.”
That Morris was coming off the back of a frustrating season with Wexford made it even more satisfying. Injuries ruled him out of the league and then knee surgery meant he missed the first two rounds of the Leinster round robin.
A start against Westmeath and late appearances off the bench against Laois, Kilkenny and Clare was his lot for the year.
“Personally it wasn’t a good year for myself. I had a lot of injuries this year.
“I came back in about a month after the surgery. I was only coming on towards the end of the games. It was obviously disappointing because when you’ve been playing on the team for so long it’s a new feeling when you’re only coming on for the last few minutes.
“I wasn’t going to let that affect the group because ultimately the team is the most important thing. It was a disappointing year and disappointing the way it finished because we had Clare on the back foot for 80% of that game and let them back into it in the last 10 minutes, so it was a very disappointing way to finish.”
To cap off the season with a county title, it couldn’t have ended better.
He’ll leave it a few months before making a call on whether he’ll return for another year with Wexford.
“I’ll get the football championship out of the way and I’m looking forward to the Leinster campaign then. I’ll see how the body is feeling towards the end of the year before seeing what’s best.”
Ferns have a long wait until they begin their provincial campaign. Over the weekend, they’ll kick back into gear with football training. The celebrations at home will have to die down at some stage.
“Or they’ll be going to Wexford hospital looking for new livers if they don’t I’d say,” he laughs.
Morris will soak in the county title win in the Portuguese sunshine.
Champions at last.
