ALL-IRELAND SFC SEMI-FINALS: Seán Moranon the fact that though Tyrone and Jason Ryan's side are 1-1 in knock-out meetings, their track records are vastly divergent

NEXT WEEKEND'S second football semi-final brings together Wexford and Tyrone for the first time in the All-Ireland senior championship. The counties did play six years ago in the qualifiers and also met in the 2005 NFL semi-finals. Although the record over those two knock-out meetings is one win apiece, the counties have vastly divergent track records at this level of competition.

It's all of 63 years since Wexford last reached the final four of the championship and the county has to go back 90 years for its previous All-Ireland success, the fourth in a then unprecedented four-in-a-row sequence of titles, whereas Tyrone have won the Sam Maguire twice this decade.

Both of Sunday's captains played in the 2002 and 2005 matches. Brian Dooher and Colm Morris lined out in both matches in their familiar positions of right wing forward and right corner back respectively.

Morris marked Peter Canavan in the first of those matches, played back in June 2002, and has frustrating memories of a two-point defeat, 0-10 to 1-9, although he equally believes the qualifier system has helped Wexford to rise in the world of football this decade.

"We felt we let that game slip in Wexford Park," he says. "We got beaten by two points. I was marking Peter that day myself. Maybe from that day in the qualifiers, people have improved. People got ideas from then on where they can travel in the game.

"We played Westmeath in a qualifier as well, a game we drew (in the first year of the qualifiers in 2001), and it was highly entertaining.

"The players believed they could get better and the main thing that came from those games was a lot of the dual players decided they were going to stick with the football rather than play hurling as well, and that definitely stood to the team as well."

Three years later the NFL semi-final in Portlaoise was marked by a deluge on a day when the other semi-final, between Mayo and Armagh, scheduled for Roscommon had to be called off.

"I did play that day all right and it was a bad day in every way," recalls Dooher. "You have to give full credit to Wexford - they deserved to win that day. They were the better team that day, the hungrier team, and they probably didn't go on to play as well in the final (where they lost to a Steven McDonnell-inspired Armagh) as they should have.

"We know they will present a stiff challenge and we remember that defeat three years ago and the qualifier match in Wexford Park a few years before that."

Tyrone used the disappointment of that match to refocus and ultimately go on to win the 2005 All-Ireland, and for Wexford it was a first breakthrough into the top level of the game.

"The conditions were atrocious," recalls Morris. "The game possibly could have been called off, I'd say. The conditions were that bad.

"But the end result was what we were delighted with and to be able to overcome some team like Tyrone is something you wouldn't even have thought about over the last few years. It definitely was a great result for this team."

This season, the counties are linked by both having played Dublin, albeit with radically different results.

Tyrone gave Dublin a thorough beating in the quarter-finals - the same Dublin that piled a 23-point defeat onto Wexford in the Leinster semi-final.

Dooher is, however, keen to put his side's performance in context: "When you look at that game, as much a good performance as it was by Tyrone, I think it is important to realise that Dublin did not perform anywhere near their potential. They left us do whatever we wanted, basically. Dublin did not turn up on the day and they will be the first to admit that themselves.

"They had a few bad wides at the start and then we got the goal at the right time and that just seemed to knock the confidence out of them. That was probably as big a factor in the match as anything."

Morris is asked about the unexpected change of opposition given that up until 10 days ago the public assumption was Wexford would face a reprise of the Leinster final.

"Every team would like a chance at redemption, no matter what the sport," he says. "But we're preparing the very same way now. Dublin beat us very comprehensively in the Leinster final and then Tyrone went out and did the same thing to them. That shows how big a challenge it will be for us."