WEXFORD ALL-IRELAND WINNING manager has urged his county not to slip into relegation trouble again and has stressed the importance of targeting more underage success as part of that effort.
Liam Griffin, who guided Wexford to All-Ireland glory in 1996, says Darragh Egan’s side “showed great leadership” to secure a victory over Kilkenny on Sunday and preserve their senior status. Wexford went into that tie on the verge of facing relegation to the Joe McDonagh following a shock defeat to Westmeath the previous weekend in which they relinquished a 17-point lead.
Griffin tells The 42 that the 4-23 to 5-18 result was “the saving of Wexford hurling”, and notes falling into the second tier would have been devasting for the future of hurling in the county.
“There was a big crowd of Wexford people who saw that win against Kilkenny, and that’s twice in-a-row that we’ve beaten them,” Griffin begins. “So, we excelled yesterday and showed great leadership. The saving of Wexford hurling was out there yesterday so that’s fantastic, and it buys us more time. But we cannot go there again. Never mind the Miracle at Lourdes, it was the Miracle at Wexford Park.
“We have a very good system in place with our underage which got completely ruined by the pandemic. This month, we’ve been in the Leinster U20 final and lost it to Offaly but we were the only county in Leinster to be in the two finals last year and this year. So you have an U20 squad twice in a Leinster final beaten by Kilkenny by one point and Offaly by two points. We could have won both of those matches, and Kilkenny went on to win the All-Ireland.
“The last thing we needed to see was our senior team not going well when this thing is starting to happen for us with the U20s.”
Wexford players shipped some heavy criticism in the aftermath of the Westmeath result, and were labelled as “spineless” by Jackie Tyrrell on The Sunday Game.
Griffin believes the squad “would be hurt” by such remarks but adds that there was an onus on the players to respond to those comments and reassert their place in the elite bracket.
“I think they’ll let that wash off them and today is the day they’ll be judged by,” says Griffin. “They were supreme on Sunday and they redeemed themselves but they needed to redeem themselves.”
Remarking on the nature of the high-scoring encounter at Wexford Park, Griffin points to a change in their game plan as being the foundation of their victory. Jack O’Connor’s movement which resulted in a penalty scored by Lee Chin, was the starting point of their march to victory.
“Kilkenny came down to kill us off and that’s sport. They were determined to go at us. They got two goals really quickly and could have gotten two more. When we went up the field, we played right into their hands because the ball was going into our full-forward line and the first man back to it if the ball broke, was a Kilkenny man. The first time anyone got by them was Jack O’Connor, and he won a penalty because he took them on.
”Kevin Foley got a brilliant goal and then you could see the confidence start to come into the team. Now, they were starting into a real game. We went in at half-time wondering how we got ahead of them? And the rest is history, they battled like tigers.
“We had leaders standing up and being counted everywhere.”
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