Ryan demanding winning mentality

You won’t find Jason Ryan scolding Aindreas Doyle for speaking out of turn.

The Wexford manager, in fact, agrees with his player’s assessment that Dublin are benefiting from playing the majority of their games in Croke Park.

“I don’t know if it’s such a disadvantage for us as it an advantage for them,” he said. “It’s a place they’re used to and they have had many successful days there.

“It’s out of our hands but it would be great if someday, games like this could be played in Wexford Park. The regional grounds and the smaller capacities bring a buzz and excitement.

“Don’t get me wrong, we want to play in Croke Park. Every player wants to but you have to try and find a balance and ensure it’s not overly advantageous to one team.”

Factoring in that the sides were level in the 2010 Leinster quarter-final at full-time, just three points have separated the counties in their last two championship encounters. But you won’t find Ryan attempting to extract any morsel of a moral victory from either defeat.

“If you lose, you lose. We realise we were competitive at stages but we lost. We put ourselves in fairly good positions but didn’t take the opportunities.

“In 2010, we didn’t finish off the job. Last year, we went three points up and didn’t drive it on from there. I’d like to think the lads are learning each time. Dublin are a good side but we hope we’re learning from the standards they’re setting.”

But what about the damage done in last year’s Leinster final, when they were in the ascendancy before Anthony Masterson’s mistake led to the first of two Dublin goals?

“You’d like to think that it would make the guys hungrier, that with hard work and focus, we can be competitive against the top tier teams.

“Dublin will be one of the top teams in the country at the end of the season and we’d like to think from last year and the year before that we’ve taken things on board and won’t make the same mistakes, rather than being psychologically scarred.”

Even if Dublin are one of two teams that stand in the way of Wexford winning a Leinster title, the provincial crown remains a definite aim for Ryan.

“You look at teams who lose in provincial semi-finals and finals and ask why they do so poorly in the qualifiers? “It’s because they set their sights so strongly and so single-mindedly on provincial finals, then they go into the qualifiers and things plummet for them.

“The one-week turnaround for provincial finalists — it’s all psychological. It has nothing to do with the physical. We’ve been in two Leinster finals in four years and a Leinster title would have been a goal. It remains the same. We would be underselling ourselves if we thought otherwise.”

Ryan believes the replay against Longford was a blessing in disguise for his team, giving them a much-needed extra competitive game going into Sunday’s semi-final.

“We needed as many highly competitive games as we could possibly get. We played Longford over four games across league and championship this year and all were close affairs.

“The win in the replay was great for our belief and helped our physical development. It showed us some of the things that weren’t right and weren’t working but the impression we get is that there are signs of improvement.”