|
Replying To ElGranSenor: "Had a look at the names on the teams who made the Rackard League A Final
No prizes for guessing which team had players with the surnames Quigley, Codd, Barron, Higgins, and Ruth playing for them!" Wouldn't one of those be more a Rapps surname historically?!!!
Viking66 (Wexford) - Posts: 19785 - 25/05/2026 12:18:43
2675329
Link
0
|
|
For next year, more than likely with new management if we can avoid injuries ( unlikely )
I really believe we might surprise many followers of the game.
It seems obvious but Cian Molloy looks like he has what it takes to be our new centre back.
Richie Lawlor could then play as a half forward which I think is his best position.
With Jippo full back and Patsy in centre back it would add enormous strength to our defensive spine. That has been a weakness for quite some time now and you won't beat any of the top teams if your central defence is lacking in physique and ball winning ability.
It's been said many times on here and elsewhere that it is hoped that the likes of Jippo,Chin,Jacko and Kevin Foley don't deside to hang up their boots at intercounty level.
All four still have a lot to offer for at least another year or two.
Cillian and Cian Byrne would add depth to the forward lines and I would have faith in Jack Redmond.
We are not by any means up to standard at the moment but if we can play like we did yesterday for 20 minutes and extend that throughout the 70+ minutes ( not easy I know) then we will be back in business and ready to take on the big boys.
.
Magpie2 (Wexford) - Posts: 696 - 25/05/2026 12:38:43
2675336
Link
0
|
|
Replying To Viking66: "Wouldn't one of those be more a Rapps surname historically?!!!" Yes although his mother's side of the family would be Rathnure royalty!
And if we want to get controversial, I think you could say it's more of a Shamrocks surname than a Rapps one….
ElGranSenor (Wexford) - Posts: 1312 - 25/05/2026 13:06:38
2675349
Link
0
|
|
Replying To Viking66: "The gap at underage has narrowed appreciably at underage this year between Munster and Leinster. If we have a team capable of winning a minor or u20 Leinster title next year there's no reason they couldnt win an AI title." FWIW, I think Tipp are probably #1 at Minor this year and there's not much separating anyone else, Westmeath weren't even that far off it either, whole lot of team around the same level if I had to guess
ElGranSenor (Wexford) - Posts: 1312 - 25/05/2026 13:08:43
2675352
Link
0
|
|
Replying To Magpie2: "For next year, more than likely with new management if we can avoid injuries ( unlikely )
I really believe we might surprise many followers of the game.
It seems obvious but Cian Molloy looks like he has what it takes to be our new centre back.
Richie Lawlor could then play as a half forward which I think is his best position.
With Jippo full back and Patsy in centre back it would add enormous strength to our defensive spine. That has been a weakness for quite some time now and you won't beat any of the top teams if your central defence is lacking in physique and ball winning ability.
It's been said many times on here and elsewhere that it is hoped that the likes of Jippo,Chin,Jacko and Kevin Foley don't deside to hang up their boots at intercounty level.
All four still have a lot to offer for at least another year or two.
Cillian and Cian Byrne would add depth to the forward lines and I would have faith in Jack Redmond.
We are not by any means up to standard at the moment but if we can play like we did yesterday for 20 minutes and extend that throughout the 70+ minutes ( not easy I know) then we will be back in business and ready to take on the big boys.
." To play devil's advocate though, were we so good in the first twenty minutes or were they so bad?
I thought they were definitely very poor early on and then they played very well from there on in, their backs just dominated us physically, stop Chin winning ball and we've no-one else to win primary possession in the forwards
We played some nice stuff early on but they played with so little intensity at that stage that I don't know how much you read into it, we then went away from working it and resorted to going long where we proceeded to lose nearly every ball that went up there
Ball go up, ball come straight back
I don't know why we went away from it. Not good enough to do it against pressure? Too tired? Tactical instruction? Patsy and Carley have a lot of quality on the ball so we should be able to play out against pressure and we stopped doing it too early in the game to say we were tired, would say it was down to tactical instruction (Or lack thereof)
Limerick are hell-bent on working the ball short, they'd drop Hannon into the FB line to create a line of 4 and then they'd drop O'Donoghue and O'Donovan into the HB line to create a second line of 4; leave them as they are and they've the numbers to work the ball short and then launch into their FF line from their HB line, push up and you've a lot of players a long way away from play if they go long off the puck-out and they'd be in a lot of space too
I don't think anyone would look at us this year and say that they'd look to copy our tactics
ElGranSenor (Wexford) - Posts: 1312 - 25/05/2026 13:16:54
2675357
Link
0
|
|
Replying To ElGranSenor: "If Dublin are the standard bearers in Leinster right now, then we wouldn't be that far off if we had a full pick
Problem is getting anywhere close to a full pick, I don't know who comes back out of those who were unavailable this year and that's before we even mention how many of those who are currently in the panel will be unavailable next year" Think we are deluding ourselves that we wouldn't be far off with a full pick. When most of those stayaway players did commit we were still losing to likes of Antrim, collapsing against Westmeath and taking a hiding usually in a QF. When was the last time we beat Dublin in a championship game? We tend to console ourselves with soft talk like "we beat ourselves" or "if we had a full pick". The results over a number of years don't lie. Dublin are routinely now in Leinster finals. We havent been near one since 2019. Second division of league and second worst team in championship by a distance, if there's a positive Id love to hear it!
Timbertony (Wexford) - Posts: 581 - 25/05/2026 13:28:55
2675366
Link
0
|
|
Replying To Timbertony: "Think we are deluding ourselves that we wouldn't be far off with a full pick. When most of those stayaway players did commit we were still losing to likes of Antrim, collapsing against Westmeath and taking a hiding usually in a QF. When was the last time we beat Dublin in a championship game? We tend to console ourselves with soft talk like "we beat ourselves" or "if we had a full pick". The results over a number of years don't lie. Dublin are routinely now in Leinster finals. We havent been near one since 2019. Second division of league and second worst team in championship by a distance, if there's a positive Id love to hear it!" We haven't beaten Dublin in the championship since 2018. We've drawn twice and they've beaten us by a couple of points in other meetings. I don't think it's fair to say we haven't been near a Leinster final. We've only just missed out on a few occasions.
The last two years have been really poor though.
Doylerwex (Wexford) - Posts: 4530 - 25/05/2026 13:50:30
2675378
Link
0
|
|
How do we do that though? How do we get our best XV on the field? I didn't expect my suggestion re funding the players yesterday evening to be met with tumbleweed!
We can't just say "Why won't AJ Redmond commit" without thinking about how supporters behave? A very small crowd at most Wexford matches, people won't drive to Carlow for an U20 Leinster Final on a fine summers evening yet we expect players to give up their life to play in front of a few hundred people?
What do we do to players - and children - to make them feel pride in being from Wexford? All the Munster counties have this huge pride in playing for their county and supporters back them. Do we?
StoreysTash (Wexford) - Posts: 2066 - 25/05/2026 14:19:25
2675396
Link
0
|
|
Replying To Timbertony: "Think we are deluding ourselves that we wouldn't be far off with a full pick. When most of those stayaway players did commit we were still losing to likes of Antrim, collapsing against Westmeath and taking a hiding usually in a QF. When was the last time we beat Dublin in a championship game? We tend to console ourselves with soft talk like "we beat ourselves" or "if we had a full pick". The results over a number of years don't lie. Dublin are routinely now in Leinster finals. We havent been near one since 2019. Second division of league and second worst team in championship by a distance, if there's a positive Id love to hear it!" We've never been annihilated by Dublin though, we were dire against them this year and only hurled for five minutes and yet only lost by 5
ElGranSenor (Wexford) - Posts: 1312 - 25/05/2026 14:39:44
2675402
Link
0
|
|
How old is Stephen Martin? 24/25?
ElGranSenor (Wexford) - Posts: 1312 - 25/05/2026 14:41:12
2675403
Link
0
|
|
Replying To StoreysTash: "How do we do that though? How do we get our best XV on the field? I didn't expect my suggestion re funding the players yesterday evening to be met with tumbleweed!
We can't just say "Why won't AJ Redmond commit" without thinking about how supporters behave? A very small crowd at most Wexford matches, people won't drive to Carlow for an U20 Leinster Final on a fine summers evening yet we expect players to give up their life to play in front of a few hundred people?
What do we do to players - and children - to make them feel pride in being from Wexford? All the Munster counties have this huge pride in playing for their county and supporters back them. Do we?" I for one have huge pride of where im from and Wexford hurling. It pains me to see the limp performances we have put in this year. It really annoys me when some lads I know seem to be more worried about their premier league team than Wexford and thats coming from a Manchester United fan. I wish more people had as much pride in our county as we do StoreysTash. Maybe im wrong but It feels like we need a big breakthrough at whatever grade over the next 2 or 3 years . Remember the hope we had after those 3 Leinster u21 wins and that along with Davys arrival gave us the belief to go so far . Remember the hype and excitement in the county in 2019 it was brilliant and we can get back to there
Afinestick96 (Wexford) - Posts: 1086 - 25/05/2026 14:57:36
2675415
Link
0
|
|
Replying To ElGranSenor: "How old is Stephen Martin? 24/25?" 25
OpenStandWall (Wexford) - Posts: 361 - 25/05/2026 14:58:22
2675418
Link
0
|
|
Replying To ElGranSenor: "How old is Stephen Martin? 24/25?" Thought he looked good yesterday. Would love to see his club mate Aj Redmond commit too we need everyone!
Afinestick96 (Wexford) - Posts: 1086 - 25/05/2026 15:18:42
2675430
Link
0
|
|
Replying To StoreysTash: "How do we do that though? How do we get our best XV on the field? I didn't expect my suggestion re funding the players yesterday evening to be met with tumbleweed!
We can't just say "Why won't AJ Redmond commit" without thinking about how supporters behave? A very small crowd at most Wexford matches, people won't drive to Carlow for an U20 Leinster Final on a fine summers evening yet we expect players to give up their life to play in front of a few hundred people?
What do we do to players - and children - to make them feel pride in being from Wexford? All the Munster counties have this huge pride in playing for their county and supporters back them. Do we?" In terms of funding, I suppose just how much would be brought in to specifically sponsor players (If I'm remembering your proposal correctly)? And to play devil's advocate, you could argue it pushes the game further away from amateurism and towards professionalism? Also, how many players were unavailable this year but would've been available because of funding?
I might be misremembering your proposal so apologies if I am and I'm not saying it's a bad idea but I think these are the questions you'd have to be able to address if you were to put it in place
ElGranSenor (Wexford) - Posts: 1312 - 25/05/2026 15:23:30
2675436
Link
0
|
|
Replying To ElGranSenor: "Yes although his mother's side of the family would be Rathnure royalty!
And if we want to get controversial, I think you could say it's more of a Shamrocks surname than a Rapps one…." Good one!
And yes the O'Connors force is strong with a few of them!
Viking66 (Wexford) - Posts: 19785 - 25/05/2026 15:28:27
2675438
Link
0
|
|
Replying To StoreysTash: "How do we do that though? How do we get our best XV on the field? I didn't expect my suggestion re funding the players yesterday evening to be met with tumbleweed!
We can't just say "Why won't AJ Redmond commit" without thinking about how supporters behave? A very small crowd at most Wexford matches, people won't drive to Carlow for an U20 Leinster Final on a fine summers evening yet we expect players to give up their life to play in front of a few hundred people?
What do we do to players - and children - to make them feel pride in being from Wexford? All the Munster counties have this huge pride in playing for their county and supporters back them. Do we?" I'm only today catching up on everything that was written here over the weekend, and wasn't going to start replying all over the place, but since you ask for thoughts on that suggestion -
In fairness, you admitted in yesterday's post that you hadn't though it through. But you'd have to do the sums on it to see how feasible or realistic it might be. So -
1. How many players per year to benefit from this, and from where exactly in the ages? Unclear from how you said "minor players......provided they are available and part of the U20 squad".
2. How much per player per year, for it to make much of an actual difference to them?
Multiply the answer to 1 by the answer to 2. And then double it. Because one sure thing is that if you put in supports like that for a hurling squad, you'd be absolutely pilloried if you didn't do the same for football.
Work from there to see how realistic it might be.
On that U20 final in Carlow - realistically, the crowd that evening was probably 2,000 to 2,500 from Wexford, and 7,500 to 8,000 from Offaly. We were outnumbered three or four to one. Not the eight or ten to one that some would have you believe.
And while I'd still maintain that 2,000 to 2,500 is disappointing for a Leinster Final just up the road, reality is that if we'd been playing anybody other than Offaly, we'd still have been the majority of the crowd. Neither Kilkenny nor Dublin nor Galway would have outnumbered us.
Pikeman96 (Wexford) - Posts: 3691 - 25/05/2026 15:35:35
2675440
Link
0
|
|
Replying To StoreysTash: "How do we do that though? How do we get our best XV on the field? I didn't expect my suggestion re funding the players yesterday evening to be met with tumbleweed!
We can't just say "Why won't AJ Redmond commit" without thinking about how supporters behave? A very small crowd at most Wexford matches, people won't drive to Carlow for an U20 Leinster Final on a fine summers evening yet we expect players to give up their life to play in front of a few hundred people?
What do we do to players - and children - to make them feel pride in being from Wexford? All the Munster counties have this huge pride in playing for their county and supporters back them. Do we?" Not sure which post you mean about tumbleweed. Maybe its one of those that doesn't go up straight away then they put it back in when it was posted but everyone has moved on? Ive had a few like that!
But thats a problem even at club level. There's a feeling some GAA administrators have that players are lucky that the GAA is providing a platform for them to play the games they enjoy. Myself and a couple of others started an injured players fund night a few years back which we run annually to help players out when injured and it actually met with resistance from a couple of people on our Executive, even though it wasnt costing the club anything and only 3 or 4 of us were doing all the work for it and they arent any of the 3 or 4 of us. 1 of the lads doing the most for it isnt even on the Executive!
When I had a discussion with one of our county top table about coaches maybe getting better expenses for coaching our development squads he made the very good point that he doesn't get anything for all the time he puts in, which a couple of years ago could run to 40 hours a week. And he paid for his own diesel.
Its a hard one for sure, but I agree 100% that if we could help our top coaches and players better then more of them would commit to helping us more.
Viking66 (Wexford) - Posts: 19785 - 25/05/2026 15:38:20
2675445
Link
0
|
|
Replying To ElGranSenor: "To play devil's advocate though, were we so good in the first twenty minutes or were they so bad?
I thought they were definitely very poor early on and then they played very well from there on in, their backs just dominated us physically, stop Chin winning ball and we've no-one else to win primary possession in the forwards
We played some nice stuff early on but they played with so little intensity at that stage that I don't know how much you read into it, we then went away from working it and resorted to going long where we proceeded to lose nearly every ball that went up there
Ball go up, ball come straight back
I don't know why we went away from it. Not good enough to do it against pressure? Too tired? Tactical instruction? Patsy and Carley have a lot of quality on the ball so we should be able to play out against pressure and we stopped doing it too early in the game to say we were tired, would say it was down to tactical instruction (Or lack thereof)
Limerick are hell-bent on working the ball short, they'd drop Hannon into the FB line to create a line of 4 and then they'd drop O'Donoghue and O'Donovan into the HB line to create a second line of 4; leave them as they are and they've the numbers to work the ball short and then launch into their FF line from their HB line, push up and you've a lot of players a long way away from play if they go long off the puck-out and they'd be in a lot of space too
I don't think anyone would look at us this year and say that they'd look to copy our tactics" Limerick have a keeper who can pick out halfbacks and midfielders running into space. Quaid doesn't just puck it to lads standing free on the 21.
Viking66 (Wexford) - Posts: 19785 - 25/05/2026 15:41:17
2675450
Link
0
|
|
Replying To ElGranSenor: "To play devil's advocate though, were we so good in the first twenty minutes or were they so bad?
I thought they were definitely very poor early on and then they played very well from there on in, their backs just dominated us physically, stop Chin winning ball and we've no-one else to win primary possession in the forwards
We played some nice stuff early on but they played with so little intensity at that stage that I don't know how much you read into it, we then went away from working it and resorted to going long where we proceeded to lose nearly every ball that went up there
Ball go up, ball come straight back
I don't know why we went away from it. Not good enough to do it against pressure? Too tired? Tactical instruction? Patsy and Carley have a lot of quality on the ball so we should be able to play out against pressure and we stopped doing it too early in the game to say we were tired, would say it was down to tactical instruction (Or lack thereof)
Limerick are hell-bent on working the ball short, they'd drop Hannon into the FB line to create a line of 4 and then they'd drop O'Donoghue and O'Donovan into the HB line to create a second line of 4; leave them as they are and they've the numbers to work the ball short and then launch into their FF line from their HB line, push up and you've a lot of players a long way away from play if they go long off the puck-out and they'd be in a lot of space too
I don't think anyone would look at us this year and say that they'd look to copy our tactics" Also our lads werent fit enough this year. 2 different players told me that the fitness block at their 2 different clubs was way tougher than the fitness work our county hurlers did. That shouldn't be the case at all.
Viking66 (Wexford) - Posts: 19785 - 25/05/2026 15:42:48
2675451
Link
0
|
|
Replying To Timbertony: "Think we are deluding ourselves that we wouldn't be far off with a full pick. When most of those stayaway players did commit we were still losing to likes of Antrim, collapsing against Westmeath and taking a hiding usually in a QF. When was the last time we beat Dublin in a championship game? We tend to console ourselves with soft talk like "we beat ourselves" or "if we had a full pick". The results over a number of years don't lie. Dublin are routinely now in Leinster finals. We havent been near one since 2019. Second division of league and second worst team in championship by a distance, if there's a positive Id love to hear it!" If we had the stay away players along with some of the newer lads we have now we would be stronger than we were back then though.
Viking66 (Wexford) - Posts: 19785 - 25/05/2026 15:44:12
2675453
Link
0
|