John Hegarty has been down this road before. Dungarvan, Aughrim, familiar old haunts stubbornly clinging on as signposts of both the past and the present: this way to Division Four football.
Hegarty’s senior intercounty debut for Wexford was an All-Ireland B Championship game against Limerick. From 1995 until 2006 he made 105 appearances for the county and scored 21-125.
“There was a group of us who put in a lot of years with Wexford, and we started at a time when we were the whipping boys in Division Four,” recalls Hegarty.
The various iterations of the National Football League over the years mean there was not always an elementary one to four divisional structure, but either way for the early part of Hegarty’s career it felt like the Wexford footballers were always in the shadows, getting kicked about.
“But by the time we finished up we were competing regularly in Division One. And that wasn’t a flash in the pan or something that came out of nowhere, it was something we built year on year on year, successive managers and a group of players that took their lessons each year and then came back the season after and built on it again.”
In 2005 they contested the Division One league final against Armagh in front of 46,445 spectators at Croke Park. By 2008 they were competing in All-Ireland semi-finals and in the 2011 Leinster final they were just three points adrift of a Dublin side on their way to Sam Maguire glory.
However, the slide was coming. In 2013 Wexford were relegated from Division Two of the National League. It remains the last time they played at that level. They then drifted between Divisions Three and Four but since 2019 Wexford have remained in the bottom tier.
Now, Hegarty wants to push the wheel forward again. Over the weekend it was announced he would be succeeding Shane Roche as manager of the Wexford senior footballers.
“The reaction has been hugely positive, there have been so many wellwishers, then there have also been quite a few people telling you, ‘You’re mad’. But going back as far as I can remember people never got involved with Wexford footballers because of the glory or because of the profile.
“It was because you wanted to test yourself to see how good you could be as an individual and then how good the collective could be. You knew that it was going to be a lot of hard work but at the same time the jersey meant something to you. And I do believe Shane got a group of players thinking along those lines and I would certainly like to think there is more in those lads, and lots more.”
The arrival of Davy Fitzgerald to Wexford in late 2016 was a spark that helped ignite the hurlers again, and their Leinster SHC triumph in 2019 brought silverware back to a county crying out for some tangible success. Just as the footballers went one way, the hurlers were going the other.
However, the dual debate is not one Hegarty intends to borrow as an excuse. A talented hurler in his day too, he played for Wexford in the 1996 All-Ireland under-21 final, which they lost to Galway.
“We have the playing population that we can be reasonably competitive at both,” he says.
“We want to built bit by bit. Every Wexford football manager over the last few years has wanted to get out of Division Four, but it’s not that straightforward. I am under no illusions of the challenge, but at the same time it is still important the management team and players are ambitious, because otherwise why are you going to commit your time to it? I would like to see Wexford football back in a place where it is an option for kids in the county to come along and want to play football.”
His immediate focus is on trying to get Shelmaliers back to another Wexford senior football final. He managed them to the county title last year and now they are hoping to win back-to-back senior football championships for the first time in the club’s history.
In 2008 he was player-manager of his home club Kilanerin-Ballyfad when they claimed the Wexford SFC. In 1996 Hegarty was in the full-forward line on a star-studded Sigerson Cup winning UCD team that included Meath’s Trevor Giles, Offaly’s Ciarán McManus, Tyrone’s Brian Dooher and Mayo’s Anthony Finnerty. If nothing else, such experiences exposed him to a culture of what it takes to compete.
“Culture is important, to know where you are coming from and know what you are about. But long before that it is getting the culture within the training group and management right, because that feeds into confidence and momentum and a desire to do things better.
“I think you get that right on lots of wet and cold and windy nights in December and January. There are no glamour ties in Division Four, it is about being competitive and grinding out results and then assessing things at the end of the year.
“There are templates, you look at what Clare have done, you look at what Derry have done, but at the end of the day they all started with grinding out results, getting out of Division Four and pushing on from there.”
