This is where football starts getting cruel

Dublin will secure another Leinster crown but the surprise of the weekend will be this evening, if at all

IT HASN’T been the best of weeks for Wexford GAA people. Their cherished senior hurling team have just exited the 2011 Championship — the dejection on the face of their manager, Colm Bonnar upon resignation after that exit spoke volumes. There is ongoing disquiet about the arranging of hurling fixtures next weekend with their U21 hurlers in action against Dublin a few days earlier and almost everybody has an opinion on the underage development in the county since the wonder that was the Liam Griffin era in the mid 90s. Little surprise then, that tomorrow’s Leinster football final carries a small bit more significance than the Model County’s last appearance at this stage three years ago.

Wexford’s progress in 2008 was viewed with wonder and bemusement. Playing an innocent and likeable brand of football, their progress to the All Ireland semi-final of that year was as romantic as it was sensational. It dawned on those of us outside the county at the time that football had always mattered in Wexford. We discovered that their decades-long quest to find a place at the top table of Leinster football made sense in light of their history. Not too many counties could boast of having played in six All-Ireland finals and won five, and of being one of only two counties to win four All-Irelands in a row, back in 1915-18. But Wexford almost disappeared from football after that, only winning two Leinster titles, in 1925 and ‘45. With the uncertainty in Wexford hurling these last few years, football’s sustained expression in the county has become more than just a guerilla enterprise. It goes without saying that a Wexford win tomorrow would mean so much more than it would in Dublin.