Seeing beyond a purple patch

GAELIC GAMES/Interview with Wexford football manager Ger Halligan: Though Wexford are pressing ever closer towards the higher divisions of the Allianz Football League, team manager Ger Halligan is still focusing on one game at a time. Victory over Tipperary on Sunday would, however, extend their unbeaten run to five games and leave them perfectly poised for the Division Two play-offs and promotion.

The lower divisions of the league have been providing some major talking points - Limerick beating Kerry in Division Two A, and, in Division Two B, Wexford's four wins from four games.

Halligan is not getting carried away with talk of promotion, but says it was decided that this league season would be approached with a new sense of urgency.

"Well, we had a squad meeting at the start of the year," he says, "and decided to make the league our priority for the whole year. To make a real breakthrough we felt you had to be playing the best teams on a regular basis.

"Even with the new championship format we'd only play one or maybe two of the best teams every year, so we felt that to mix it with the best on a regular basis we'd have to do it in the league first. And we trained hard for the first couple of weeks with that quest in mind.

"Thankfully, we started out very well and we'd like to think we can keep it up. But there is a bit of a way to go yet and we're just taking each game as it comes."

Wexford have had some notable minor and college teams in recent years and gradually those younger players have been introduced - players such as David Murphy, Redmond Barry, Colin Morris and Diarmuid Kinsella.

But there has been one novel factor this season. When Tom Carr was unceremoniously axed as Dublin manager late last year he came on board to assist Wexford and his input, says Halligan, has been hugely important.

"In recent years we have tried to bring in some outside advice, for the simple purpose of bettering ourselves. For the last 10 or 12 years now Wexford have been stuck in the lower division of the league and I believe we need to get some advice on how the more successful teams approach their training.

"It's not just a question of being more professional, but just getting a wider input into how to approach the preparations and the training. So we have a group of about 11 players based in Dublin and Tommy has been taking those for training once a week.

"We would also mirror that training session with our group in Wexford, and then Tommy comes down here maybe once a month. He has been introducing new things and he has been very helpful."

Halligan is cautious about Sunday's game: "Tipperary have five points from their four games and this will be as hard a game as we've had so far."

So far, though, the likes of Meath, Laois, Longford and Monaghan have all fallen off the pace set by Wexford.