Ryan perplexed by another failure

A year ago, Jason Ryan walked into the post-match interview room in Croke Park and declared himself to be sick of losing to Dublin.

Yesterday, he walked into the same space underneath the Hogan Stand and declared himself perplexed as to how his side had let slip another glorious chance against the now reigning All-Ireland champions.

“I can’t pin it down to any one area,” he explained.

“Maybe on the sideline, when Dublin started playing more off the cuff when a man down, they were much harder to deal with, so we have got to look at it and think should we have made this change or that change.”

No doubt about it, Wexford helped engineer their own downfall.

“11 wides in the second half was a killer. It was 11 to two in the second half with wides, which is not ideal. We had 11 other chances that didn’t go over and credit to Dublin for the amount of pressure they put us under but what else you put it down to, I just do not know.

“That’s the million-dollar question. If we’d known at the time I suppose we’d be making those changes and alterations from the sideline. There wasn’t something that was jumping out at us. Some of the kicks we’d bank on, some of the guys scoring, but it wasn’t to be.”

If he uttered the phrase ‘I don’t know’ once he uttered it a dozen times and he wasn’t alone. Rarely has a game turned so spectacularly. The ‘how’ may be difficult to pinpoint but not the ‘when’. Diarmuid Connolly’s sending-off changed the game. Utterly.

“It gave them a huge lift. Straight away when he was sent off, they got a free. Straight away they got a chance to come at us with our kick-out and pin us in. They did that very, very well. They worked very hard. I don’t know how this 14-man thing works at all.

“If a team plays off the cuff, it’s very hard. You don’t know what’s going to happen, you don’t know where the ball’s coming from.

“If they had 15 players, would Bryan Cullen have pushed on as much in the last 20 minutes? I don’t know.

“It’s very hard to deal with them. You’re trying to set up cover in different areas, you’re presuming this will happen and that will happen and it just doesn’t because their shape has totally changed. You try and counter it.”

Ryan spoke about the tall order that Wexford versus Dublin is and always will be: a Division 3 team against a top-tier perennial; a county of limited means up against one of unlimited potential.

And yet, for all that, this was a game they should have won. He had said as much when facing the media and delivered much the same post mortem – though in far more vociferous tones – to his players after the final whistle.

None of that matters now.

This morning their attention turns to the qualifiers.

“We should have beaten the All-Ireland champions today,” he ended.

“If we don’t go on and win some more games, then the players, management and everybody involved has let themselves down.

“That’s up to us to get ourselves together. That is the challenge now. Sport’s full of challenges and if you want to be a winner, you’ve got to face those challenges and go at it.”