Beyond the gentle irony of staging an All-Ireland hurling series launch deep inside the very heart of Tipperary hurling – the Loughmore-Castleiney club, the reigning county hurling and football champions, Tipperary sadly for them no longer involved this year – there’s ample evidence the competition is only just beginning to get going.
The eight counties still in contention for the Liam MacCarthy Cup will be reduced to six after Saturday’s preliminary quarter-finals, and Wexford duly feel primed among them. Going into the last round of the Leinster round-robin they needed to beat Kilkenny in Nowlan Park to ensure their summer stayed alive, the reward for that feat being Saturday’s rendezvous with McDonagh Cup runner’s-up Kerry, that game set for Tralee on Saturday (2pm)
For Wexford forward and captain Lee Chin that date presents a multitude of reasons to be eager and content, not least the fact his season only got going in the championship. A hamstring tear, first sustained during the Wexford county championship last autumn, before being torn again in Wexford’s pre-season training, meant he effectively missed the entire league, and since then he has been coming up to his usual awesome speed.
“We’re just grateful to be in the championship,” says Chin. “We’re getting another chance at it as well. We’re coming down against an opposition that you wouldn’t regularly see much of, so it’s intriguing and, look, we’re going down at the weekend again with that attitude of it’s a knockout championship. You’ve got to be on your game.”
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Like they were against Kilkenny, needing that win to stay in contention after drawing with Westmeath the week before: “During the week there was an element of frustration involved in it, that we’d left ourselves in the position that it was a knockout championship. I suppose, during the week, with that element of frustration, we were able to transfer it into some form of motivation.
“We did a bit of soul-searching as well, during the week. We did a lot of work on Kilkenny; we knew what threat they posed. We’ve had great battles over the last number of years, and we were going to Nowlan Park and it was a big incentive for us obviously to remain in the championship.
Old self
“We used what we could as well. During that week someone had mentioned that we hadn’t beaten Kilkenny in Nowlan Park ever in the championship – not that we might have played them much over the years in championship.”
Judging by his current conditioning, Chin clearly lost nothing of his old self during that time off the field, although he admits it was testing.
“Yeah, it has been very frustrating. I missed pretty much all the league, bar 20 minutes against Waterford in the semi-final. It was a frustrating thing, but when you’re seeing the work that Darragh (Egan) was doing and the players, and I suppose the league campaign that they did have, it does help to motivate yourself.
“But there is an element of seeing them getting on so well in the league, that it was quite frustrating at times as well. And it’s hard to see that date when you’ll be back on the field… you get to competitive training, and it’s a long process. But I suppose being on the road for a while as well, not having many injuries, you can use it as a bit of a break, a bit of a mental break.
“I think it’s benefited me to some degree this year, and I’m just trying to take the positives out of it more than anything. But in my own head I think there’s been some benefits.
“I had a grade three tear in my hamstring. I actually tore it in the quarter-final with the club last year, it would have been late enough in the year and a couple of weeks after that I just over-stretched it and it tore on me again, so it was just going over old scarring.
“I had to take a really serious route to it then and really get stuck into the rehab and stuff as well. There was no surgery, it was pretty much rehabbing. Patience is a lot of it, and just making sure everything else around the hamstring is strong and remaining strong while letting the time go by to heal the actual muscle that’s damaged as well. When it gets to a certain point you are conditioning that again and rehabbing it too.”
Wexford haven’t been talked about much in the overall All-Ireland picture and for Chin that’s understandable: “Yeah, well I don’t see why there would be much talk about us, we’ve had a mixed-bag championship, got results where we probably weren’t expected to, did get results where we weren’t expected to as well.
“But we’re happy enough keeping the talk down anyway. Kerry is the next focus – we’ll hopefully put in a performance down there and move on to the next day.”
