Positive Davy hails his ‘immense’ side after a late escape against the Blues
IT was a game that his Wexford side almost contrived to lose despite being in control for most of it, but Davy Fitzgerald simply wanted to focus on the positives after his side got their Leinster campaign up and running. Even though Dublin were leading going into injurytime, Fitzgerald says that his team deserved to win the game. ‘I think they only led with two or three minutes to go, or even less,’ said the Wexford boss. ‘Naturally, it’s not a nice time to go behind, at that stage of the game. It has happened me once or twice with Clare, so I know what the story is. But the thing I loved, we didn’t drop the heads even when we went down. We fought and I think that’s important.’ Even though it was an afternoon when Rory O’Connor announced himself as a reliable freetaker, Fitzgerald was keen to emphasise his team’s work-rate and ability to shut the Dublin forwards out — as they did successfully for most of the match. ‘I was delighted with how we played,’ Fitzgerald said. ‘We created 38 chances and we had 22 scores, 14 wides and another two goal chances so that’s up there with anybody. It is just when you are up, you have to kill the game off. We didn’t. But that will stand to us. We are only a year and a half into this project and a lot of teams wouldn’t have come back the way we did with two minutes to go. ‘Rory got two fantastic scores. But I think we have to look at the blocks and the tackles. I honestly thought that our tackling today was immense, if you really look at it. Look at the one-to-one tackling, I thought we dispossessed them a load of times. Very happy with that. It was great that Rory threw them over, but I honestly think the team effort was fantastic.’ And while yesterday’s narrow win puts Wexford in prime position to be one of the three Leinster sides that make the AllIreland series, Fitzgerald cautioned against taking Offaly for granted when his team head up to Tullamore next week. ‘I have an awful lot of respect for what Kevin Martin has done in Offaly. He has done an incredible job and really bridged the gap. I always said that they might catch someone in the Championship. And they have to win against us, you would normally tell us that Wexford find it hard to win up there, no matter what the story is, we always find it tough. So that is coming. We have to get ready for it.’ Pat Gilroy accepted that Dublin struggled to get up to the level that they displayed against Kilkenny a week earlier. ‘In fairness, Wexford outworked us for long parts of that game. We hadn’t brought the same intensity as last week but we did keep going and when you are in the winning position late on, it is very disappointing to come out on the wrong side of it. ‘Wexford were all over us, right throughout the game. We were working hard, but they were working that bit harder, but I think last week’s game stood to us. We finished strong, except for the last three minutes again. That is something that we do really need to improve.’ However, Gilroy, who will have Conal Keaney, Donal Burke and Eamon Dillon back for the Offaly game, refused to accept that it is basically a relegation play-off with the Faithful men. ‘It is not about making progress, it is about winning games. We expected to win these two games and we didn’t so we are very disappointed. I wasn’t surprised by the performance last week, because there has been a big improvement in the last month. It is not progress as we did not win these two games. But I can’t fault their effort There are a lot of things we are doing well, but when you’ve got winning opportunities, you’ve got to win. ‘But we have two games left and we will be concentrating on each of them fully. By the time we play Galway, it could be wide open. We still have a chance to be in the playoffs but it will be hard,’ Gilroy said before agreeing that relegation from the Leinster Championship for one team doesn’t make sense. ‘Ah I don’t really want to comment at this stage but the games have been very close. It does not seem to make a lot of sense. We have two weeks to prepare for the Offaly game and we will be putting our heads down and putting a lot of work into it. We are doing a lot of things right and doing a lot of things well. We just need to push on.’