By John Harrington

Wexford manager Davy Fitzgerald’s glass was half-full after yesterday’s Allianz Hurling League Division 1 semi-final despite the 11-point defeat to Tipperary.

He was pleased with how his team hurled for the bulk of the contest, and insists they’ll take all sorts of positives from a campaign that saw them promoted from Division 1B.

“I think it was 63 or 64 minutes gone and what I was happy about was that physically we had competed,” said Fitzgerald after the match.

“They had got two goals, maybe one of them fortunate. We were still there like, we were fighting away.

“You can tell by me, I’m not actually devastated  - you don’t like losing by ten or 11 points or whatever it was – but you know what, for a long part of that game they gave Tipp socks of it.

“So from that point of view I wouldn’t have dreamt of that when I came into the job. We are making progress.

"We have got to learn a few small little things. We actually had identified a few things before we came in today – and it happened at the end of the game, exactly what we had talked about.”

Tipperary outscored Wexford by 3-6 to 1-3 from the 59th minute of the match to the 74th, but Fitzgerald believes that was mainly due to some fixable errors by his own team rather than any wonderful play by Tipperary.

“That was us – that wasn’t Tipp,” said Fitzgerald. “That was us switching off, that was us going from exactly the stuff we worked on.

“When we came back under a small bit of pressure at the very end and they got the first goal, I think we switched off and they went back to the old habits.

“We’ll knock that out of them. We’ll get there. There is a bit of a process. But I think most people that were at the game today will think it was pretty competitive for most of the game – that’s my view of it from where I was on the sideline anyway.”

Tipperary manager Michael Ryan suggested the final score wasn’t reflective of the competitive nature of the match, and admitted that Wexford made for awkward opposition for most of the contest.

“Yeah I think it flattered us,” he said. “I think the goals flattered us. Don't get me wrong, we were delighted to get them and they were well engineered and well taken but they game was a lot closer around the middle third than that would have suggested.

“If you watch the end of it, those guys kept coming and coming and they got a goal but thankfully we had enough of a cushion at that stage.

“We came to try and get through and get ourselves into a League final so mission accomplished on that regard but it was a great game.

“Jesus, it was highly uncomfortable there for a very, very long time. Only in the second half did we get the couple of scores to give us some daylight that we could actually relax a little.

“Wexford were full value for it now, we knew what they'd bring and they did bring it. I thought they were very well organised.

“The couple of goals that we got in the first half stood to us. We were trailing them on points so that would suggest that they were doing the bulk of the work, the bulk of the scoring.”

Davy Fitzgerald took serious umbrage with the second of those Tipperary goals and launched a one-man pitch invasion that briefly held up play.

He admitted after the game he was trying to give his team a lift, but also said it was something he has no plans of ever doing again.

“When Tipp start to get a blitz on you, you just have to…just try to make sure I could lift my lads a small bit,” said Fitzgerald.

“I was hoping they might respond a small bit more. They responded after that which was no harm with a bit of fight.

“Let me make this clear, I could not blame Diarmuid Kirwan. I thought he was very good, very fair. He’s one of the top referees. I will not criticise him. In a game you’re going to get one or two things either way.

“But just unfortunately, that one hurt us at the time. But we’re not going to be complaining in Wexford. 100 per cent not.”

Wexford won’t see action again now until the Leinster SHC Quarter-Final on either the 27 or 28th of May, and Fitzgerald intends to give his players a well-earned rest between now and then to allow them recharge their batteries after a draining few months.

“We went hard very early and I’m going to have to give them some time off now because I pushed them very hard, they’ll need two or three weeks off, I have to do that,” said Fitzgerald.

“You saw it with Clare last year, we were out early and I thought we flattened a bit. I’m afraid that might happen but in our position we had to do that to get confidence and win games.

“We’ll give them a small breather and come back, but you can see that Wexford are going to compete no matter what.”

As for Tipperary, they march on to next Sunday’s Allianz Hurling League Division 1 Final against Galway in the Gaelic Grounds with a spring in their step.

There were all sorts of positives to take from this match for manager Michael Ryan, with the wealth of attacking options at his disposal surely the biggest plus.

Michael Breen made a massive impact when brought on at centre-forward for the second-half, and John O’Dwyer also caught the eye after his introduction as a second-half substitute.

And Ryan revealed after the match that Patrick ‘Bonner’ Maher will soon be ready for action too after returning from his six-month tour of duty with the Irish army in Syria.

“Bonner’s been in, he joined us as soon as, it felt like, he got off a plane,” said Ryan.

“He’s working away, he’s in great shape. Obviously he needs to get some hurling time into him, and the only place he can do that is on our training field, as often as he can.

“He’s champing at the bit, he’ll stand out, he’ll be tanned, and the girls will love him when they see him!”

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