Wexford can tame Cats again, insists Travers

THREE years have passed since Wexford consigned Kilkenny to their only Leinster SHC defeat of the last decade and defender Malachy Travers admits his county have failed to live up to the promise of that performance.

Michael Jacobs’ dramatic late intervention set the seal on a superb Wexford effort, one where manager John Conran overhauled their tactical approach to maximise their own strengths and nullify their opponents.

Three Wexford players were making their championship debuts that day — Travers was one — but any hopes of a brighter future were weakened by their subsequent All-Ireland quarter-final struggle against Antrim and heavy defeat to Cork.

“It was a nice day to make my debut,” said Travers. “It had been a while since we’d done something like that. We went on to beat Offaly in the Leinster final that year but we didn’t put in a good enough performance against Cork in the All-Ireland semi-final.

“That same group of players will be in our line-up against Kilkenny (Sunday) so we feel we haven’t delivered on the performance from three years ago. That’s something that sits uneasily on us and something we’d like to rectify because we’ve made progress this year.

“We want the medals to show for it.”

Wexford began their year in a familiar and worrying fashion, shipping an 11-point NHL defeat to Waterford but the next two months brought more cheer with a quarter-final defeat of Galway following on from wins over Clare and Offaly, a worthy two-point defeat against Cork and a 34-point destruction of Down.

Then came Kilkenny in the last four and the sky fell in. Their 15-point defeat was a concern in itself but it also suggested that the gap between the teams was growing; not condensing.

Wexford had lost the 2005 Leinster final to their great rivals by three points, the 2006 Walsh Cup decider by six and last year’s provincial showdown by eight.

Seeing that doubled in less than a year was not the way to approach the summer.

“People always look at the end result and our last game was a comprehensive defeat against Kilkenny but we had played Galway in a tough game seven days before that and maybe overdid it that week coming up to the Kilkenny game.

“Kilkenny were clinical and we weren’t as fresh as we would have liked. We felt we were in good shape but we let ourselves down. We have a chance to put that right this time.”

Leinster has lived in Munster’s shadow for the last ten years and the drama witnessed in Semple Stadium and the Gaelic Grounds this past few weeks has merely accentuated the need for a competitive Leinster final.

The consensus is that if any team can get under the Cats’ skin it is Wexford and, having done it three year’s ago, Travers doesn’t see any reason why history can’t repeat itself.

“It’s something we’re highly motivated for. It’s something we’ve used in recent years as motivation because you would expect Kilkenny to get through the other side of the draw. We haven’t really done it against them in the last few years and we’re conscious of that. We have beaten them before though and that’s something we can use.”

Offaly showed in the first-half of their defeat that Kilkenny’s feathers can be ruffled but Wexford’s struggle in overcoming Dublin in the other semi offered little in the way of hope for an upset in Croke Park. Wexford’s horrendous wides tally allowed their opponents back into the game before a late Barry Lambert free secured their final berth.

“It was the same in our first league match of the season,” said Travers. “We hit 17 wides in that match against Waterford and ended up beaten. We’ve addressed that and hopefully we won’t have that many the next day. You would hope not.

“It was a close shave. We had the chance to put them away and we didn’t but if we have that chance against Kilkenny I’d like to think that we would take it. It was a mental thing; with five minutes left we had the chance to go eight points clear but the momentum swung to Dublin and they could have gone on and won. Lucky enough we had the ability to go on and win the match.”