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In the latest in this series on the best games he has ever witnessed, RTÉ GAA commentator Darragh Maloney recalls the 1996 Leinster SHC final between Wexford and Offaly.
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Wexford’s great pitcher Tom Dempsey says it’s the game “that changed everything” and led to an Irish title and another Leinster crown in 1997.
The game was Leinster’s 1996 final against defending champions Offaly, who were the favorites to win three in a row. They had narrowly lost to Clare in last year’s Irish final and had beaten Wexford well in the past two years.
In fact, Offaly had been outperforming Wexford in the province since 1979, which led to his advancement across Ireland in ’81.
That mid-90s period was an incredible time to pitch, with other forces appearing in the game. Offaly followed his two All-Irelands with a victory in 1994, while Limerick was on their heels and was unlucky not to finish his long waste spell.
Clare ended her more than 80-year wait for Liam in ’95, but Wexford was one of the superpowers who had become bridesmaids and there was not much evidence that they would become the bride when the summer of 1996 arrived.
Offaly had become his ghostly side and Tom Dempsey told me recently that they were his “enemy”. Wexford hadn’t been very lucky this decade in the big games and had developed a habit of going into winning positions and then fading away.
They had a four-point mattress at Kilkenny in the decisive 1993 Leinster, but were unable to close it.
The Wexford County Board made a very cunning appointment in 1995 with Liam Griffin (above) taking over control of the team. He didn’t bring big silverware in his first year, but the following summer was different.
Griffin was ahead of his time in many ways. He used a sports psychologist with the group when most people had never heard of them, and had developed multiple ways to motivate his players.
On the morning of the Leinster final, Griffin stopped the team bus, bound for Dublin, on the Wexford-Wicklow border. He removed the panel from the coach and gave them a poignant five-minute speech, which included references to the Wexford Rebellion of 1798 and Wexford’s blood running through his veins.
Before the game, a journalist had questioned the Wexford players’ commitment after so many glitches and this was how Griffin buried that. He told the players that they would not return the same way without the Bob O’Keeffe Cup.
The players didn’t know why they were being pulled off the bus, and some Wexford fans passing by are said to have thought they had broken down, but the speech was certainly the trick.
Dempsey says a Wexford player later asked him, “How will we get home if we lose?” and someone said, “We can go back down the Naas path!”
There was not much pressure on Wexford in the lead up to the Leinster Championship that year. Offaly were rude to John Troy, the Dooleys and Pilkingtons flying.
The likes of Tom Dempsey, Martin Storey, and George O’Connor had pitched Wexford for years without winning anything significant. They hadn’t won Leinster in 19 years, but they had taken Kilkenny’s scalp on their way to the final. But Kilkenny was not the problem at the time; It was Offaly.
I watched the game from Canal End that day with my dad and we were standing behind weather forecaster Gerald Fleming, who is from Wexford. There was a big buzz around him when other fans noticed “the guy on TV.”
It was a classic game of the time and it was what you describe as a true “end-to-end launch.”
Offaly were the favorites and started better with a 1-05 lead to 0-04 points after 18 minutes when Wexford received a penalty. His goalkeeper Damien Fitzhenry reached out to score it and then captain Martin Storey called quickly.
Wexford narrowly led the way at halftime and then went up three points. What seemed like a crucial marker was a goal that Tom Dempsey says “headed in” after Gary Laffan threw a line ball from Adrian Fenlon upright and Dempsey was the fastest to react.
It was a great move by Wexford, but in the next attack Michael Duignan scored a goal from Offaly that brought them back to him. Interestingly, Griffin had talked to his players before the game about that same scenario, where his team would score a goal and then Offaly would get his own.
It was another example of how he used psychology when little was known about it at the time in a sports setting. There would be frequent one-on-one psychology sessions with players who clearly embraced the concept and were asked to visualize certain situations and asked how they would deal with them.
Wexford was three points apart with five minutes remaining and thoughts of his previous failures would certainly have been on their minds. Those defeats had been at the center of the newspaper article questioning his performances in previous years.
But then Dempsey put the ball in front of the Cusack Stand and placed it for what Tom describes as “the best point I’ve ever scored.” That gave Wexford a four-point lead and, unlike other occasions, there would be no Wexford collapse.
There was no bad luck or bad luck story this time. Griffin had told his players that he was looking for a performance against Offaly. He said a performance “was a thousand different things and it was about trying to get it right on the day.”
Dempsey (above) scored two more points and Storey connected three in the final minutes out of breath. Hundreds of Wexford fans surrounded the field when Storey earned the last of his points and prepared to celebrate his first Leinster crown in 19 years.
Wexford won 2-23 2-15 and won All-Ireland.
Wexford supporters and players celebrated their victory at Leinster as an All-Ireland, but the panel returned to training the following Wednesday.
They sat in a circle around Liam Griffin in the field.
He asked them if they had enough. Did you want to do more in 1996? He told them to leave and think about it and come back with their answers the next night.
Griffin said that if they wanted to do more, they would start training to try to win All-Ireland.
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