Richly-deserved accolades for our All Star recipients

HUGE CONGRATULATIONS to our newest All Stars, Dee O’Keeffe and Lee Chin, who bridged a 15-year gap in receiving their awards on Friday evening. These awards have thrown up many controversies over the years, but the selection of the young Wexford warriors was automatic as both had outstanding years in the purple and gold shirts.

It is a real testament to the wonderful year that we have had, and I feel that any of our nominees had justification for hope before the teams were announced.

I could cover a page listing the wonderful attributes our two young men possess, both sporting-wise and personality-wise, but one of the stand-out features is the impact they make and attitude they possess when wearing their club jersey.

Their approach and application never diminishes no matter what the environment, and we are incredibly lucky to have leaders who are a pleasure to know both on and off the field.

Dee’s Wexford Park performance versus Kilkenny is one of the many highlights of 2019, as was the manner in which Lee carried us home in the Leinster decider, but for me it was they incredible consistency they both showed that set them apart.

As I said earlier, the All Stars have had many contentious selections over the years, with selectors not always getting things right.

Brian Whelahan’s omission despite being hurler of the year was one, and I always felt that Tony Doran only receiving one award over the course of an incredible career was not a reflection of his standing as the best full-forward of his era.

The weighting is too heavily in favour of the All-Ireland final and particularly the winners and, as a result, many great players from counties who are not consistently successful (Wexford included) don’t get their fair recognition.

This year Tipperary were awarded seven honours as opposed to Limerick and Wexford with two each, yet there certainly wasn’t as glaring a differential in the performances of the three counties over the year.

Limerick beat Tipperary in the Munster final, and Wexford had them on the rack.

In fairness, however, it is not an easy process and this year’s selectors got a lot of things right.

The goalkeeping position was always going to be open, with Eoin Murphy having missed the early part of the championship, but I will admit to being taken a little aback by Mark Fanning’s failure to receive a nomination.

I feel that Liam Ryan has been the best full-back in the country this year and should have been selected, with Ronan Maher pushed out to the number four position, and my only other change would be Jason Forde included in the half-forward line as he was one of the lynchpins of Liam Sheedy’s success.

You could sit in a room with five people and have five different opinions however, but I would safely say there would be few to dispute the merit of our two men.

A few years back we had the local ‘Purple and Gold Stars’ which were the brainchild of Jim McGovern, and I feel we should revisit this scheme as it was very popular with players and an excellent way of recognising performance in the domestic championship.

As a recipient, I always felt it a huge honour to be recognised for performances with the club, and I would love to see a re-launch of these awards.

The local championships came to a conclusion on the weekend before last, with St. Anne’s great run coming to an end at the hands of St. Martin’s who have now won two of the last three Senior titles.

It will be interesting to see if the Piercestown men can extend their winning run into Leinster. They face the toughest challenge in Henry Shefflin’s Ballyhale, but more on that next week.

Everyone is back in the mix now for next year, and I can’t wait for it all to start up again.