THERE WAS A move in the dying moments of Wexford’s win over Kilkenny that typified their approach under Davy Fitzgerald.
With the sides deadlocked at 1-14 apiece late in the day, Aidan Rochford won a hard ball on the deck when Diarmuid O’Keeffe darted into some open road in the left-half forward position.
Rochford broke a couple of challenges and flicked across the half-back line to Rory O’Connor. Urged on by the vocal home support, O’Connor picked out the unmarked O’Keeffe with a low 30 metre stick pass up the sideline.
The Wexford substitute carried it forward and split the posts, sending them into a lead they wouldn’t relinquish.
It was a score born on the Wexford training ground. They packed the middle third, fighting ferociously for possession in the area that became a real battleground on Sunday.
Kilkenny’s half-back line was drawn up field, leaving space behind them for the Wexford runners to attack. Every player has licence to attack as they see fit and O’Keeffe got himself ahead of the ball, taking the chance that his run would be picked out.
Wexford recycled the ball to O’Connor, who duly obliged with an intelligent pass to his unmarked team-mate.
O’Keeffe’s score helped seal the Model County’s third straight win over Kilkenny, extending their unbeaten run against them to six games. Of his 13 meetings against Brian Cody since taking charge of Wexford for the 2017 season, Fitzgerald has prevailed on eight occasions.
Fitzgerald’s release of emotion at the final whistle made it clear that this was more than a mere league game played in atrocious mid-February conditions. The Clare native was evidently keen to retain whatever psychological advantage Wexford hold over Kilkenny at present.
It’s remarkable to consider that young Cats such as Huw Lawlor have yet to experience victory against Wexford at senior level. Quite the turnaround for a county who were under the thumb of Kilkenny for much of the previous decade.
In their six championship encounters from 2007 to 2015, Kilkenny prevailed by a sum total of 87 points. Wexford’s 2017 Leinster semi-final victory was seen as a turning point in this rivalry. That night Fitzgerald was suspended from sideline duties, taking in the game from a custom-built box in the press area of Wexford Park.
Under the All-Ireland winning goalkeeper, Wexford are tactically advanced, while they’ve also caught up and possibly bypassed Kilkenny in the physicality stakes. The main difference though is Wexford’s shift in mindset. They no longer fear the Cats, instead expecting to beat them when they take the field.
When Kilkenny moved within a point by the 51st minute after a powerful third quarter, Wexford held their composure and got over the line against a horrendous gale. They posted five of the last seven points, buoyed by the second-half introductions of O’Connor, Lee Chin, O’Keeffe and Matthew O’Hanlon.
That Wexford can now hold their own against Kilkenny without those four players in the starting XV says a lot about how far they’ve come.
Of course, it goes without saying that the real battle lines will be drawn on 13 June when these counties meet in Leinster. There was an experimental air about Cody’s team, with Conor Browne at corner-back and Michael Carey making his first start in midfield.
TJ Reid, Colin Fennelly and Padraig Walsh have all yet to return from club duty to bolster Cody’s hand, while Eoin Murphy didn’t feature against the Model. The 58 minutes he got into Richie Hogan’s legs is a major boost at this time of year. Keeping the Danesfort ace sharp and fit will be high on Cody’s list of priorities in the spring.
Fitzgerald, meanwhile, was keen to play down the significance of the victory and immediately looked ahead to the battle coming down the line.
“I wouldn’t read anything into that at all,” he said of the record.
“We know what’s coming in June. That’s all that’s in my head right now, playing them in Nowlan Park. You know when you play Kilkenny, every day is an unbelievable day because they are going to give 110%.
“You see that with Kilkenny-Wexford battles, especially over the last three years. Those are nip and tuck, all the time. I love that.
“That’s why I’m in this thing— I want those battles. I know what they’re going to be like in June. He (Brian Cody) won’t want to go a seventh one. He’ll want to get the victory.”
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