Any ambiguities about John Hegarty’s intentions as Wexford football manager were resolved last week with the announcement that he had been reappointed after a front-loaded season.
Seven straight league wins shot the county out of Division Four and if the championship and Tailteann Cup campaigns had the feel of a hangover, Hegarty makes the simple point that in the management’s third year, there had to be one overriding ambition.
“At the start of the year, we were very clear that our number-one priority was the league. Now, it wasn’t our only priority and sometimes that got lost a little bit in translation. But if we didn’t get promotion, no matter how you wrapped it up, then the project was a failure.”
A year previously, Wexford were denied promotion because of an injury-time penalty conceded in February against Leitrim, which ended up being the crucial, head-to-head difference in the league table.
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“I know the cool thing is to talk about ‘process’ and that it’s not about outcomes, but in year three, it had to be about the outcome. Everybody – the whole squad came back, the whole backroom came back – was with that primary goal. And we achieved it after five games.”
Promotion was both a peak and a watershed. They lost the divisional final to a Limerick side they had already beaten, but not by much and with genuine alibis.
“We lost Glen Malone in the warm-up; Martin O’Connor was sick the night before. Having conceded three goals while getting none, we still only lost by two points. Disappointing but it didn’t take any of the gloss off the league for us.”
The new split-season structure was about to take its toll. A refixed match against Wicklow in early March meant that Wexford faced a sixth successive match in the first round of the Leinster championship. Had they won, the next round would have been seven matches in seven weeks.
“No matter how good your squad is, that’s where the cracks start to show. So, our Leinster championship – we felt that we gave it what was in the tank but our GPS numbers were dropping around that time.
“They were still covering the ground, but going from Pearse Park’s (Longford) surface to Croke Park should mean that lads’ max speeds are increasing but they were going the other way.”
Wexford stabilised for the Tailteann Cup and reached the quarter-finals where they lost to familiar opposition. Limerick, who impressed hugely in the tier-two championship and would come within a last kick of winning it, beat them again.
Prioritising the league makes sense for any team with thoughts of upward mobility. Teams in the bottom division are more or less debarred from the Sam Maguire unless they get a lucky draw in their province, which is almost impossible in Leinster.
“If you want to be serious about sustaining progress,” he says, “then you have to go up to Division Two and that is true until you hit that mark and become comfortable there.
“Then, you can realistically plan to peak in May. For everybody else, and I’m talking about the Westmeaths, the Downs of this world, the league is still very, very important to establish yourself, so that’s the level you’re comfortable playing at.”
I don’t think we’ll be putting a limit on what we’ll be aiming for
— John Hegarty
Hegarty faces into a close season which will start with keeping a close eye on the county championship. That has changed for this season. Wexford formerly made a virtue out of running its hurling and football seasons sequentially, allowing players to concentrate on one game and then the other.
Now, the seasons will be alternated with football and hurling on successive weekends, an arrangement Hegarty believes will not benefit football in a county with possibly the highest dual involvement in the country.
“In the alternate-weeks model, football tends to lose out. I’m not saying they don’t get to train, but if there’s any extra required, it comes from football towards hurling.
“What we were finding when it was a split – hurling first and then football – even the likes of Rathmore and Oulart, who would have not entered football teams for a long time, got involved because players got tired sitting around for eight weeks.
“It also meant that everybody got a block of the same seven, eight, 10 weeks of football and you could see the standard improving the whole way along. It meant that I felt the standard was improving within club games.”
He will keep an eye on all grades to look out for new talent. However, he is equally conscious that with a settled team, radical overhauls won’t be on his agenda going into such an important season.
“I think to sustain what we did last year, staying up is an absolute necessity. That is crucial. The age profile of the group and the ambition of the group, they’re things that say they can be around and can keep improving.
“Promotion next year is not a must but at the same time, just because of those two things, the age profile and the ambition, I don’t think we’ll be putting a limit on what we’ll be aiming for. I think it’s the most stacked Division Three I can remember for a couple of years.
“We’ll be under no illusion either that other teams will be circling us as a banker. We’re crashing the party this year but we’ve fought to get this opportunity for a long time, so we’re going to be looking to maximise our impact. This is where we want to be and we want to be looking upwards from here.”
