For the Wexford footballers, there is no time to stew over last week’s Division 4 league final defeat – there’s a Leinster championship stirring. For the sixth consecutive week, they must go again.
John Hegarty’s side finished top of the Division 4 table and were the only football team in the country to win all seven of their group games. However, that record ended last Saturday at Croke Park when they lost their divisional decider to Limerick.
It was the Model County’s fifth successive week of competitive action, having played a league match every weekend from March 1st. It will be six weeks on the bounce when Laois visit Wexford Park for a Leinster SFC opener this Saturday at 6pm.
The winners of that match will then play Louth one week later, but the punishing schedule is not something Wexford are labouring on as a negative.
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“You get into such a rhythm in the National League, week on week,” says team captain Liam Coleman.
“This is obviously a new competition, so I’m sure the way the management are going to speak about it will be a little bit different. It should be a good match, Laois have had a good year.
“That’s just the nature of it these days, you’ve a game and then it’s move to the next one straight away.”
The debate over the inclusion of league finals continued over the course of last weekend. If there were no divisional deciders then Wexford would have won Division 4 as table-toppers, plus they would have earned a two-week gap to the start of the Leinster championship.
However, the Castletown clubman believes there is more to be gained than lost by retaining league finals.
“First of all, I think having the league finals is brilliant, and having them in Croke Park is even better,” says Coleman.
“I do think it’s unfortunate timing, you’re out one week straight after. In an ideal world that’s not the case, but it’s not the end of the world either.
“It could actually be a good thing for us, because we get to dust off the cobwebs on Saturday evening and get straight back into matches. You’re in such a rhythm from the National League anyway, and it makes it easier to just stick to the process, stick to what you know.
“I said it to a few lads after the match, we were just chatting, it was so enjoyable to be there in Croke Park with the match in the balance, and getting up the steps on the line. That was so enjoyable.”
Having secured promotion to Division 3 for the first time since 2018, Coleman hopes Wexford can now harness that momentum by putting together a strong championship campaign.
“Probably every Division 4 county would tell you this, but we don’t feel that’s where we belong,” says the midfielder.
“We know we have the talent, it’s just been that consistency. You obviously had a successful Wexford team [in the past] but then after 2011-12 there were a lot of people retiring.
“There was just a void there that didn’t get filled, and hopefully now John and his management team are putting the structures in place, and the county board are putting the structures in place, to allow us to begin to develop properly.”
