Brosnan: We’re a bit too nice

LEINSTER SFC QUARTER-FINAL:

With just under half an hour left, they led by three points and had a man advantage after Diarmuid Connolly was sent off, yet left the field after losing by four. And if any Wexford player personified the turnaround, it was Ben Brosnan.

Scorer of four points from play in the first half, the attacker ended the game with nine wides from dead balls. As the Slaneysiders begin their quest for a provincial title against Louth tomorrow, he has an idea as to what went wrong, even if he’s still not fully sure why.

“I went back to look at it recently,” he said, “and I had no routine whatsoever. I usually take seven steps back and two to the side, look at the goal in the middle of my walk-up and kick it.

“That day, some frees I was taking 12 steps back, whether it was the crowd or I was caught up in the game or whatever it was, I just didn’t have a routine.

“Looking back, I couldn’t believe it really. In 2011, I only missed five frees in the whole championship and then I missed nine in the one game.

“Everyone is going to say it was because it was into the Hill but I had trained with headphones in, I had read that Daniel Goulding had done it before, and in 2011 the Hill were booing and I kicked them all.”

Someone with white boots and blonde highlights is always likely to draw more attention, but it’s something Brosnan is well used to.

“I probably put myself in for a small bit of that,” he said.

“That’s the way I’ve been since I was 11 or 12, it’s not just because we’re playing Dublin in a Leinster semi-final. When somebody does that and does play bad, it’ll stick out and people will say, ‘Why don’t you wear black boots and have normal hair?’ but I don’t mind the pressure of that.

“We played Tipp the week after Dublin and I hurt my hamstring on the Tuesday so I was only able to come on as a sub, though a few people had asked me if I was dropped.

“I probably shouldn’t have played but I wanted to show what I was made of after the Dublin match.”

Tomorrow’s game will be the first time since 2007 that Jason Ryan won’t have been in charge of Wexford for a championship match. Aidan O’Brien, a former teacher of Brosnan’s in Good Counsel in New Ross, is now the man in the bainisteoir’s bib.

“Everyone was a bit disappointed when Jason left, it was a bit of a shock, I was over in America when I heard,” he said.

“I think the county got the man they wanted though, all of the players wanted Aidan because of the good work he had done with Horeswood, and he knew everyone too.

“Aidan kind of sits back, he’d prefer to have players talking in the dressing room rather than him saying everything. In training and that, he’s open to suggestions and will take stuff on board, he’s not telling everyone the way things should be done.

“With Jason, everything was done down to a tee, so there is a bit of a contrast that way.”

And does O’Brien retain the teacher persona? “He does a bit. He still gives out to lads on a bus for doing something silly or that sort of thing!”

The spring resulted in Wexford being relegated from Division 2, but that is boxed away now and the focus is on Louth... and being a bit nastier.

“You can look back at recent games against Dublin, or even other championship games,” he said, “I think we are a bit too nice.

“We need to be a bit more cynical and foul when we should foul rather than being too honest, running back 40 yards with someone and then being too tired and fouling them on the 20m line rather than fouling them 60 yards out.”

It’s all geared towards the holy grail of the Delaney Cup, with a recent visit by Ronan O’Gara during a training weekend in Fota Island also designed to give them the extra few inches.

“If he didn’t have an answer he’d just say that he didn’t, there was no bullshit,” Brosnan said. “Everything was straight with him, he just told it how it was. He was telling us that you can be underdogs in the media but within the dressing room you have to have confidence and that’s something that we have to take.

“If you believe in yourself and believe in the player beside you, there’s no reason why you can’t beat anyone.”