After Dublin’s shock draw to the Offaly footballers in the opening round of the O’Byrne Cup, they’ve put themselves in a bit of a tricky situation…
To qualify for the next round of the pre-season competition, the reigning All-Ireland champions now need to overcome Wexford by a total of seventeen points or more.
The game will be played in Bellefield in Enniscorthy at 2pm, the exact same date and time the Wexford hurlers will face Wicklow in Ashford.
Temporary Dublin manager Paul Clarke is aware that the large result against Wexford won’t come easy, but remains confident that the scoreboard will look after itself:
“Wexford won’t make it easy and I wouldn’t expect them to, so we’ll see how bodies are, how injuries are,” he told The Irish Daily Star. “One or two guys may be back available to us so we’ll pick a team and give it a go.
“We’ll pick the best starting fifteen and then you do what you got to do and just let the scoreboard do its job; hopefully it stays ticking over.
“It’s important to go down and perform, it’s important to go down and get a win. That’s what you want and that’s what you want the players to feel, that they’ve contributed something over the past couple of weeks. They should be proud of it and to go down and get a win would be important for us.
“For the guys who are there at the moment who are trying to push on, to put themselves in the shop window for Jim Gavin, that’s still what it is.”
Speaking to RTE, Clarke later stated that:
“We can only deal with what we have,” he said. “We’ll look at our players and talk to them, have a bit of a session maybe on Friday and assess how things are going.
“We’ll put a squad of players on the bus that want to go down and win the game. We always knew we had to win it, now we’re just putting a figure on it, a number on it.
“We’ll go down and give it a shot. Wexford will not make it easy for us, by no means. If they can keep us to 16 points or 15 points they’ll see that as maybe a moral victory.”
“We’ll put a squad of players on the bus that want to go down and win the game. We always knew we had to win it, now we’re just putting a figure on it, a number on it.
“We’ll go down and give it a shot. Wexford will not make it easy for us, by no means. If they can keep us to 16 points or 15 points they’ll see that as maybe a moral victory.”
In the opening round of the O’Byrne Cup, Wexford lost out to Offaly, however, new manager Paul McLoughlin will be hoping his charges put in a bigger performance this time as they aim to get their campaign off to winning ways.
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Wexford Weekly
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