Hurling: Gavin Cummiskey talks to the Wexford boss about the lesson from Kilkenny and facing in-form Clare
Last Sunday should have been a day of jubilation all across Wexford. But a couple of hours after the county's footballers achieved the dream-like state of reaching their first national league final in 59 years, the hurlers tumbled into a nightmare.
How do the current Leinster champions respond to a 30-point drubbing by main rivals Kilkenny in mid-April? That is the question hurling manager Séamus Murphy was presented with this week. In a period when they should be gearing up for the summer, they meekly bowed to the island's form county.
Wexford hurling will eventually bounce back. When, is a different matter. It gets worse in the short term as Clare are expected to sleep walk into the league final at Wexford Park this weekend.
Clare may be an aging team but Anthony Daly, the leader from their halcyon days, has managed to build on last year's championship showing and almost erase the memory of the Waterford trouncing.
Wexford have gone the other way by reliving the 19-point defeat to Cork in last year's All-Ireland semi-final. The behind-the-scenes fallout cannot have been too agreeable this week.
"We had to ask a few questions," Murphy understated. "There was some dressingroom talk on Sunday and again on Tuesday night. There was also a little talk of how we flopped against Cork last year as we thought we'd got rid of that sort of performance but here it was again.
"A few promises were made to ourselves. We do this again in the middle of the championship and there will be no way back."
Some obvious questions followed for the Rathnure man who took over from clubmate John Conran after he bowed out in the wake of the Cork trauma. Like what went wrong?
"It's a combination of injuries," said Murphy. "Had we been picking from a full squad we would be learning that bit more. It is difficult to decide on the right positions for some players because they are not fit. To a large extent, I was robbing Peter to pay Paul.
"Kilkenny hit two wides on the day. It was a Sunday evening game and a few lads had been at the football match before travelling over after."
In fairness to Murphy, a rather large "but" followed to prove he is far from being in denial: "But that can't account for how bad we performed against Kilkenny. We were annihilated. I felt like we started well enough and matched them but we were just not scoring. Then Richie Power got his goal and the heads began to drop.
"The lads could see the game slipping away and with it went their interest in the league. Heads just went down."
This week Murphy held just one session, on Tuesday night, in the hope of easing a depressingly long injury list but Colm Keogh's hamstring only added to the pile up of bodies. Thomas Mahon and Darragh Ryan are tentatively returning from long-term problems while Willie Doran (shoulder), Diarmuid Lyng (thumb) and Paul Carley (back) were recently joined by Keogh, Nigel Higgins and Eoin Quigley.
"I won't be naming a team until Sunday. We backed off for a week as I think the lads were a bit jaded and the local club championship in both football and hurling is coming up in the next few weeks. We'll meet again on Saturday."
If a Wexford hurling manager had turned around even two years ago and said dual player Redmond Barry was getting the weekend off to rest up for football the laughter would have been deafening. This is a positive, though.
"I didn't even approach Pat Roe on the issue. It's common sense stuff and only fair that there is no pressure on him ahead of the football final."
Due to the continuing disruptions, Clare on Sunday will tell little about their future prospects. Ditto the Leinster championship semi-final on June 15th against either Laois or Dublin but thereafter looms the men who inflicted the humiliation of Nowlan Park.
