'It gave a young Wexford footballer something to look at. Through my teens, that disappeared'
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Liam Coleman recalls thinking the referee had blown the final whistle that Sunday in Carrick-On-Shannon. The Leitrim player standing next to the Wexford captain thought the same. Then they both realised that referee Mark Dorrian had awarded a penalty.
In the last play of the game, Ryan O’Rourke scored from the spot to give Leitrim the victory. There was bewilderment for Wexford at the time as to why a penalty had been given. That would turn to considerable frustration five weeks later when it turned out to be the result which separated the two sides in the Division 4 table. On the head-to-head rule, Leitrim were promoted to Division 3 while Wexford remain on the bottom tier rung for 2025.
“You could look at it that way, but one decision over the course of seven matches, I mean, if that’s the attitude we were going to take into the championship campaign, it probably wouldn’t be right,” Coleman said when asked if it feels like Wexford were robbed of promotion.
“It's frustrating because promotion was such a goal for us. We felt we were value for it and it didn't happen.
“Score difference, we had Leitrim. I think we had a nine-point win, 10-point win, 14-point win, 10-point win after that, which is massively positive for us and what we'll focus on.”
This Sunday, in the first round of the Leinster SFC, Wexford face a Carlow side they defeated four weeks ago. Reaching the county’s first Leinster football semi-final in ten years was the goal put in place after the conclusion of the league. That would mean beating Louth, a Division 2 team, if they get past Carlow.
24-year-old Coleman recalls the bus journeys down the M11 to Wexford Park more than decade ago when the county was truly competitive in Leinster. In the 2011 final, the one which started Dublin’s 13-in-a-row dominance of the province, Wexford lost by just a goal.
“It's funny, my dad is a Dub,” explained Coleman.
“He would have moved down from Dublin to Castletown in north Wexford. There was conflicting views watching those matches! He would have tried to have me on the Dublin bandwagon.
“Colm Morris would have been playing, Anthony Masterson would have been playing. It was great and exciting. At the time, it was what you wanted to do. It gave a young Wexford footballer something to look at. Through my teens, that disappeared.
“That's the bar. I still talk to Colm, I still talk to Anthony about how we can get back there. There's a lot of passionate football people in Wexford. We want to see it back there.”
Coleman also talks to his current teammate Ben Brosnan, a 17-season inter-county veteran, about how Wexford football can return to being as competitive as they once were. The 36-year-old recently became the county’s all-time record appearance holder.
“It's incredible to have someone like that around the panel, that experience,” said Coleman.
“He can talk about how things were. He can tell us what we should be doing and he can also tell us what we're doing better than what they would have done. Even the evolution of the game, he always talks about it.
“What a quality footballer too. Top scorer. Ask any of the lads who mark him in training, you don't want to mark Ben.
“The way he looks after himself is top quality. He's training every night. Ben's not stepping out, resting on the Tuesday after a match. That's the standard he's set. If you want to play, you have to train.
“He'll tell you himself, if he looked after himself as well for the first part of his career as he has for the second part, he'd have another 10 years in him!”
This is a young Wexford team. Several of Coleman’s teammates from a good Wexford minor and U20 crop have nailed down starting spots. That transition started under Shane Roche and has continued with John Hegarty, a Wexford legend, in charge.
Beyond the Leinster championship, Coleman feels taking a step further in the Tailteann Cup this year would be signal progression.
“Last year we got to a quarter-final of the Tailteann Cup, and it was a campaign that really, really benefitted us as a team, because we had a lot of injuries in the league and we only got our players back for the Tailteann Cup. And I think we only got to see what we could do as a team,” he said.
“So, we want to build on that this year, and if we could go one step further and get to a Tailteann Cup semi-final, that would be a success for us. ”