Wexford footballers have had a few Jems down the years

Tom Humphrieson the colourful history of the county's football team, including being trained in the 1910s by the boxing blacksmith Jem Roche

THERE IS an old story about a disgruntled apprentice involuntarily leaving the employ of his gruff master down in Wexford and pausing at the yard gate to observe: "There was never anything came out of Wexford but bad, black-hearted hoors and strawberries. And you're no strawberry!"

Whatever else has come out of Wexford besides those two commodities we tend not to associate the place with footballers. Somewhere between the county's last Leinster title in 1945 and now, the Yellowbelly imagination was usurped by hurling.

Odd when you consider that Wexford had one of the greatest football teams in the history of the games back during the 1910s. They won six Leinster titles and took the All-Ireland four years in a row. The team was trained by the 1900s star Jem Roche.

It is worth Googling for an image of Roche, partly because he was quite the figure of a man and partly because he was the grandfather of Dick Roche TD, and those who have had erotic dreams involving seeing Dick Roche wearing nothing but his jockeys may be able to comment on the resemblances.

Strange to relate that though he was part and parcel of one of the greatest football sides in history it is perhaps emblematic of football's eclipse in the county that Jem Roche is remembered best for less than a minute-and-a-half's worth of boxing one hundred years ago.

It's a thrilling little bywater of sporting and racial history that Roche plays his part in. Back then, to the disgust and fascination of much of America, Jack Johnson was perhaps the greatest boxer on the planet. Johnson was black.

Unforgivably so.

Tommy Burns was the world champion and all through 1908 Johnson drummed his fingers waiting to fight him.

Burns was a Canadian, born in a log cabin in Ontario. His real name was Noah Brusso and he was the 12th of 13 children.

He was out of school at age 10 and put to work. When he got to be 19 he turned to prizefighting for a living. Knowing his mother's views on the dark trade, he adopted an Irish-sounding name, Tommy Burns, and hoped she wouldn't know it was him.

Burns wasn't popular with American sportswriters for several reasons. He was puny for a heavyweight champion, standing five feet seven inches tall and weighing 170 lbs. Yet he was champions for nearly three years and played the roll with a dramatic and commercial sensibility which suggests he knew what he was about.

In 1908 Johnson was itching to get at Burns. The American boxing writers, who had less than a high regard for either man, were disappointed Burns refused to fight Johnson on racial grounds and so egged the two of them onwards.

Burns agreed to the fight in principle but departed in early 1908 for Europe, where he wished to fight a series of local champions and pick up some easy money.

In a ballroom in London he knocked out a pug called Jack Palmer, whose reputation was such that an English boxing writer described him as " an English horizontalist". That was on February 10th. Palmer lasted four rounds of the scheduled 20, and Jem Roche, the Irish heavyweight champion and a blacksmith from Wexford, was present.

The New York Times pressed him for a view, given that Richard "Boss" Croker of Tammany Hall fame was putting the money up for a Roche-Burns fight in Dublin soon after.

"Palmer fights like an old woman," said Jem, "while Burns is a master or the art and besides was in splendid condition."

If there was any hubris in Jem's dismissal of Palmer as fighting like an old woman he lived to regret it surely. On St Patrick's night one hundred years ago, the Theatre Royal in Dublin was packed for Burns's next bout, which was against Roche.

The Weekly Irish Times observed that both fighters walked to the centre of the ring, where after they had gazed at each other for a while, Roche attempted a few punches which Burns parried in "a you-must-not-do-that-it-interferes-with-what-I-want-to-do" sort of way.

According to the paper: "Then Roche struck out. Burns's body shot forward from the hips and the Wexfordman rolled on the floor. That was all."

Eighty eight seconds. The shortest world heavyweight title fight in history. Last year's Leinster hurling final lasted longer. The Weekly Irish Times commended the Wexford folk present on knowing how to lose gracefully.

On April 30th just six weeks later, Roche suffered another defeat, being knocked out by Bill Squires of Australia in the fourth round.

Burns continued his tomato-can tour and when asked why he wasn't somewhere getting ready to fight Johnson, he replied with commendable frankness: "Just put this down in your notebook. They will never have to hold any benefit for me."

Asked later why he still hadn't returned to fight Johnson, he was just as candid: "There are still some juicy lemons here that I haven't squeezed! There's too much easy money here for me to overlook it!"

Finally at the end of the year, on St Stephen's Day, Burns and Johnson fought in Australia in a legendary and bitter fight. Johnson tore Burns apart, goading him as he did so: "Poor little Tommy! Who told you that you were a fighter?"

Johnson had the cool nerve to announce his punches. "This is what is known as a left hook, Tommy", and then he would launch one. "Look out for your eye, Tommy," and bam!

Jem Roche fought on for a few years until 1913 or so, working away at blacksmithing and finally coming to train the Wexford side which should really have given the county a tradition of football on a par with Kerry's.

Strange to think that in the years after Wexford's first All-Ireland hurling title in 1910, football exploded. Six Leinsters on the trot, the first two of which led to heartbreaking defeats at the hands of Kerry.

And then the breakthrough in 1915, with 30,000 gathered in Croke Park to watch the Kingdom beaten. Wexford had names then - Aidan Doyle, Seán and Gus O'Kennedy, Fr Ned Wheeler, Frank Furlong and Tom Mernagh - who it seemed would be etched in the folk memory for generations, particularly as the county won just a single Leinster hurling title between 1910 and 1951.

Tomorrow in Croke Park Wexford's two county sides duke it out, football strong enough, it seems to vie again with hurling for space in the imagination.

Jem Roche will be wondering about his county folk and their gracious way in dealing with defeat and hoping they don't get more practice.