Tom Dempsey worried for future of Wexford hurling when key players retire
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Former Wexford star Tom Dempsey is perturbed at the prospect of several Leinster-winning players stepping away from inter-county hurling in the coming years.
Dempsey is preparing himself for a raft of the 2019 provincial winners to retire and knows that they won’t be easily replaced.
“We have some very good young fellas and while we're not winning national titles we are competing well at U20 and minor, and we'll have a good minor team next year,” said 1996 All-Ireland SHC winner Dempsey, who on Friday received the Gaelic Writers Association’s hurling hall of fame award with support from the Dalata Hotel Group.
“Lee Chin (32) is probably one of the top three Wexford hurlers I've seen in my lifetime. He's an amazing hurler. You have other great servants like Rory O'Connor (26), Matthew O'Hanlon (33), Liam Óg McGovern (33), Diarmuid O'Keeffe (32), and Kevin Foley (29), but when they start to step away I fear they will be hard to replace and my understanding is that Matthew O'Hanlon is possibly going to retire this year.
“A lot of those guys are in the 32/33 bracket and they will be a huge loss when they're gone and very hard to replace, so that's a worry. How we develop these younger players in the next few years is going to be very important.
“I'm a little bit worried and, yet with Wexford we always seem to pull ourselves out of the quagmire and come up with a few results when it matters. But I am a little bit worried about how we'll cope over the next few years when these lads start to retire.”
Staying up in the new Division 1 next year will be a priority for Wexford and as much as St Martin’s have made the last four in the Leinster club SHC, Dempsey would like to see more attention paid to promoting clubs in the county.
“At the moment, I think we're looking at consolidation. I can't put my finger on what's wrong with Wexford hurling, but I do think we're not putting enough emphasis on the need for very strong club hurling to make a strong county team.
“We're very focused on development squads and bringing young lads through when I think we need to look a bit more at seasoned club hurlers and try to bring our club championship to a better level, because it's not at the level we would like to see it.”