Davy won’t catch Tribe out again

I CAN hardly wait for tomorrow’s novel Leinster final, which I believe is going to live up to the hype. This is the first-ever meeting of Galway and Wexford in this final and it would have taken either a brave or foolish man to call this at the start of the year. I am gob-smacked by the impact that Davy Fitzgerald has had on Wexford even though, as I have stated previously, Liam Dunne deserves a lot of credit for laying the foundations. But they would never have soared this high without Davy (right) and he truly is a gift to the game in that infectious manner he has in getting a team and a county to fall in behind him. A lot is made of his system-based approach but it is Wexford’s physicality and touch as much as organisation that has impressed. And yet, they are up against it tomorrow. For all that Wexford have achieved this year — not least in beating Kilkenny on the double — the one thing that might just come back and bite them in the posterior is their League win over Galway. They caught Galway napping that day in the final quarter and I have no doubt that the memory of that will drive the Tribesmen on tomorrow. On top of that Galway — even though they have not been tested — have hit the ground fast this summer and they are in such a vein of form that they will take a lot of stopping. The suspicion still hangs over them — not least from the 2015 All-Ireland final and last year’s Leinster final — that when hard questions are asked in tight games they struggle for answers. They are perceived to be vulnerable mentally and that League defeat to Wexford carried an echo of this, which is why this time if they get in front I expect Galway to drive hard all the way to the finishing line.