Wexford bid to shift the focus from Forde

THE way it is, in popular imagination, is that Mattie Forde takes on the might of Armagh in Croke Park tomorrow.

That's how it is, Wexford consist of the Footballer of the Year and 14 others.

Foolishness, of course, nobody knows that more than Forde. Take what he says about the player who stands at the edge of the opposite square: "Philip is probably the best full-back around, at the moment."

The full-back chuckles when he hears his famous team-mate's assessment. "Well, Mattie is well-known for his sarcasm," he says, yet Forde's opinion is hardly an isolated one.

Wallace has earned the Vodafone player of the month award for April, and did more than anyone else to de-rail the Tyrone juggernaut in the semi-final.

It's no surprise to Wexford supporters. Throughout the league, Wallace has performed with the same consistency that has been the hallmark of his senior career. The one spring blemish, the team's only spring blemish, was the afternoon Padraic Joyce ran riot, immortalised by Pat Roe this week as his side's Macedonia moment.

Like all good players, Wallace's significance becomes most apparent in his absence. He was injured for the Sligo game this year, a game in which Sean Davey scored 1-6. When asked about his form, Wallace heaps praise on others in this Wexford team.

"Well, Colm [Morris] and Niall [Murphy] have been outstanding all year and when you are playing full-back and the two guys beside you are doing their job, it is all the easier for you."

Tomorrow brings the most feared full-forward line in the country. When Steven McDonnell and Ronan Clarke are at their peaks, as they were for 15 minutes last weekend, they can be almost impossible to defend against.

"Watching Clarke last Sunday, he looks like he is coming back into the form he showed a couple of years ago. In fairness, all the Armagh forwards are good, they are brilliant at creating space for themselves and taking scores. It is going to be a huge task for us."

Tomorrow's league final is the culmination, Wallace believes, of both the disappointments and toil of the last few years.

"This is something that has been building up over the past couple of years. Getting to Division One last year and playing the big teams, that is when you start believing you can compete against them and beat them.

Playing at their standard, you start believing you are as good. "Other years, in the championship, you had a bit of an inferiority complex, because you spent the league playing Division Two teams."

Wallace had to wait six seasons to experience his first championship victory in a Wexford jersey and he feels it was no coincidence it came last year, after their first season in the NFL top flight.

"It was frustrating never getting past the first round. We drew with teams a couple of years, I remember drawing with Westmeath in Wexford Park one year, put in a great performance and we went up to Mullingar for the replay, fairly confident, and they beat us by six or seven points.

"It seemed like that was the case every year - we would match teams in performance, stay with them for the first 50 minutes and then fade away in the final 15 or 20 minutes. We didn't believe we could beat them, it was really just a belief thing."

Pat Roe has revolutionised their mindset. Wallace joined the panel in 97, along with seven or eight of the current first-team, young players who had tasted colleges success with Good Counsel in New Ross. It took Roe to translate that winning mentality onto the highest stage.

Now it has come, Wallace believes his team can take the next step. "It has been building for the last five years or so and a lot of the players came into the team at the same time. So, when you reach a certain level, you want to push on from there. You want to make the most of it."

Wallace is based in Dublin, teaching history at Terenure College, an establishment that has a reputation for churning out full-backs of another ilk.

The perception might be the school looks down on all things GAA, but there is plenty of anticipation ahead of tomorrow's match. "A lot of the staff are GAA people and a lot of the kids are very interested now, they are all heading to the final, so I better not get sent off."

Not just for the kids's sake, but for Wexford's sake as a lot more people than just Mattie Forde are realising.