By John Harrington

Wexford’s Lee Chin is predicting Kilkenny will be a ‘different animal’ than they were in the League Quarter-Final if the two teams clash again in the Leinster Championship.

The Slaney-siders were impressive five-point victors over the Cats when they teams met in that quarter-final at Nowlan Park on April 2.

That game has whetted the appetite for a potential Leinster semi-final between the two teams on the second weekend in June in Wexford Park.

Wexford would first have to win their quarter-final against a qualifier from the Round Robin phase of the Leinster Championship, but it would be a surprise if they didn’t considering the form they’ve shown this year thus far.

Chin isn’t looking beyond that quarter-final, but predicts that if they do go on to face Kilkenny it’ll be a whole lot harder to beat them in the Leinster semi-final than it was in the League.

“Look, I suppose at the moment we're playing with a lot of confidence and obviously to beat Kilkenny in a National League Quarter-Final gave us a lot of confidence as well,” said Chin yesterday at the launch of the John West national Féile competitions. 

“But we know Kilkenny will be a different animal if we do make it to Wexford Park with them. They'll be a different animal in the championship.

“Of course, we still know it's a massive task. Kilkenny are just not going to lie over and let us do it to them twice in a row.

"But, obviously, look, we know we have to over the first game against the Round Robin team and then get over Kilkenny if we get there.

“That's our path to a Leinster Final and that's what we have our eyes on at the moment, hopefully we can get there.”

In recent years Kilkenny would have gone into any Leinster Championship match with Wexford has hot favourites, but that wouldn’t be the case this year.

This Wexford team is heavily populated by players who knew nothing only success against Kilkenny at U-21 level, and so don’t have the same fear of them their predecessors did.

“I think that probably does have a bit of an effect at the moment,” agrees Chin. “I was part of that first U-21 Leinster win against Kilkenny in the Leinster Final in Wexford Park.

“And the two years after that again they beat Kilkenny. Obviously with players coming in now from those three years, a lot of them are in with us now at the moment in the senior panel and obviously they bring a lot of confidence as well in themselves.

“They come with a lot of confidence and they bring a winning mentality as well.

“Yeah, of course, it will have an effect when they're beating them at underage levels and coming into a senior set-up with all of those victories under their belts. Yeah, it does help with that mentality.”

Wexford’s promotion form Division 1B of the Allianz Hurling League this year and subsequent win over Kilkenny in that quarter-final at Nowlan Park has energised the whole county.

It’s a long time since a Wexford team has come into a championship with such hype and expectation around them, but Chin insists that doesn’t weigh heavily on the players.

“No, look, at the moment we don't feel any real expectation,” he says. “We have our own goals as we would every year, I suppose.

“You know, like I said, we're delighted that we've achieved getting out of Division 1B and we're going to be in Division 1A next year.

“But obviously the fans at the moment and the fact that they're really buying into us at the minute and they're really following us, and obviously they'd like to see us get back to a Leinster Final.

“You know, I suppose we love the excitement around the county at the moment as players and we love the buzz that it creates.

“But me myself I don't feel any pressure at the minute. That's just the way Davy has us at the minute, that we just go out and perform in a way that we've been trained to do.

“If that gets us a victory it gets us a victory and if it doesn't then it's ourselves that really messed up.”

Wexford’s superior fitness seemed a factor in their early League wins over Limerick and Galway that laid the platform for their promotion form Division 1B.

It’s been theorised by some that this advantage won’t exist in the championship when every team is up to speed in terms of fitness, and so Wexford might have already plateaued.

But Chin disagrees, and instead believes their form can continue on an upward curve through the summer.

“Well, from what I can see I don't think we trained any harder this January than we did any other January. I think what we done was pretty much standard enough.

“We worked fairly hard, I suppose. We probably pushed ourselves a little bit more in terms of training. But we didn't do anything worlds apart from what we would have in previous years. I still think we have a lot left to offer, yeah.”

The League ended disappointingly when they were overrun in the final ten minutes of their semi-final against Tipperary, but Chin is adamant that they're still taking an awful lot of positives from the campaign as a whole.

"It was hard to evaluate the feeling you had," he says. "We knew we were on a nice run and had nice momentum but obviously we didn’t want to get beaten and didn’t want to get beaten the way we did, by 10 points.

"I knew it was going to be a big task to play against Tipperary but at the end of the day one of our main goals was to get out of Division 1B and we were happy with that.

"When our league campaign ended you’d be proud of that even if you wouldn’t be happy with the way you went out. It was a mix of emotions but all in all we were happy enough with the league campaign."

The only real cloud on Wexford’s horizon is the eight week ban that will sideline manager Davy Fitzgerald for the first two rounds of the Championship.

Chin doesn’t expect him to have any involvement with the team’s training sessions during that period, but is confident the Wexford backroom team can cope without their leader.

“I think technically no, he’s not allowed be part of training,” says Chin.

“I think that’s what’s in the rulebook, that he’s not supposed to be involved with us so we haven’t really been in contact since we’ve been back in with the club championship back in Wexford.

“I suppose it’s something that we as players never would have really faced before.

“But look, I suppose we’ll just have to deal with whatever is there, Davy’s backroom team is very good and they’ll pick up the pieces from here.”

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