Wexford 1-14 Armagh 0-12: SIGNS OF the times. Mick Wallace has just opened an inviting wine bar right outside Croker. On Saturday Matty Forde ate Armagh's liver with some fava beans and a nice chianti. The strawberry pickers are in the All- Ireland football semi-final.
Repent your sins just in case the apocalypse is nigh. Saturday's biblical floods may just have been the start of Wexford's subversion of world order.
Listen. What a story. Some 14 months ago the footballers of Waterford were annihilated by Kerry in the relative privacy of Fraher Field, Dungarvan. Late in the day they offered Jason Ryan the parting gift of a few minutes of football as the fifth sub, at the end of a debacle. Nobody noticed. Nobody apart from Jason Ryan and close associates cared.
Waterford should have offered Jason the bainisteor's bib. On Saturday at Croke Park Ryan pulled off one of the most deft managerial feats of the age by taking a Wexford team to an All-Ireland football semi-final. Wexford? A team who should have no right to believe in themselves in the first place and were beaten by 23 points a few weeks ago? Wexford being guided by a Waterford footballer who finished his intercounty career as he had spent it, on the wrong side of a hiding?
Their progress is a romance and a sensation, narrative qualities underlined by the brisk dismissal of Armagh, football's dirty realists, on Saturday at Croke Park. Wexford were supposed to be fodder to Armagh's muscular renaissance. Loveable dilettantes, their innocent, likeable brand of football never looked geared towards the biggest hitters in Ulster.
But Wexford survived and thrived. All the romance necessary to complete the occasion was provided by Forde whose afternoon was a string of sublime moments each one more unlikely than the previous.
Forde has so long been one of those extraordinary players with whom one sympathised for being trapped in the wrong county at the wrong time. Saturday was his moment of reprieve and as he nailed each spike into Armagh's coffin he raised a clenched fist to the watery heavens.
Armagh will wonder for the longest time where this went wrong. Having added another Ulster title to their collection this looked like the sort of game which would bring them on another step.
The old strike force of Steven McDonnell and Ronan Clarke were back in harmony on Saturday, weighing in with half a dozen points and at times making Wexford's sweeper system look foolish and redundant.
But it was the other older components which failed to function when needed. Francie Bellew had a torrid afternoon, midfield faded out for long periods and in a game neither particularly dirty nor particularly sporting Armagh picked up the lion's share of yellow cards. The rain poured down. They looked like yesterday's men.
Wexford belied their recent history by closing out the game in the style of a team used to winning these type of games in Croke Park. With eight minutes left on the clock, Eric Bradley floated a wonderful ball in from the right wing. It dropped over the tired Armagh defence and into the welcoming arms of Forde.
Matty's career came down to this moment in many ways. He shuffled this way and that and put the ball into the Armagh net. Wexford went from being a point down to being two points up.
Ciarán Lyng, another thorn in Armagh's side through the afternoon, added a free two minutes later and Wexford were on their way.
The only scare in a composed last act from Wexford was when an Aaron Kernan free seemed to come off an Armagh fist and almost slid over the Wexford goalline on 70 minutes.
Even at that stage though Wexford led by more than the width of a goal and looked like they could have withstood such a setback. As it was Anthony Masterson reacted instantly and the danger was swept away.
However Jason Ryan managed to transfuse confidence back into a team dragged feet first from the field after the Leinster final, he has done an incredible job. On Saturday Wexford knew in all probability they were playing for the right to face Dublin again, this time in an All-Ireland semi-final. They looked like that prospect made them hungry.
Perhaps when the worst happens it liberates you. Wexford have that humiliating afternoon seared into their collective memory now but have come back a better and stronger team for it.
There were times in the first half when they looked as if they would be outmuscled and outhustled and only Forde's ability to draw fouls was keeping them alive.
WEXFORD: A Masterson; D Walsh, P Wallace, B Malone; A Morrissey, D Murphy, C Morris (capt); E Bradley, B Doyle (0-1); R Barry (0-2), P Colfer, C Byrne; C Lyng (0-5, three frees), PJ Banville (0-1), M Forde (1-5, one free, one sideline). Subs: N Murphy for D Walsh (60 mins), C Deely for A Morrissey (60 mins), R Stafford for C Byrne (66 mins), T Wall for P Colfer (67 mins), A Flynn for B Doyle (73 mins).
ARMAGH: P Hearty; E McNulty, F Bellew, F Moriarty; A Kernan (0-4, three frees), A O'Rourke, C McKeever; P McGrane, K Toner; C Vernon (0-1), B Mallon (0-1), M O'Rourke; S McDonnell (0-3), R Clarke (0-3), S Kernan. Subs: P McKeever for S Kernan (46 mins), B Donaghy for C Vernon (62 mins), D McKenna for K Toner (70 mins).
Referee: Paddy Russell (Tipperary).
