McLoughlin Speaks Divison 3, Wexford Football Transition And Current Panel

Newly appointed Wexford manager Paul McLoughlin spoke to Dublin City FM after his side’s terrific victory over Dublin in the O’Byrne Cup. 

In the interview, he spoke about how his new squad needs time and support during a transitioning period for Wexford football, the difficult league campaign that awaits, and how he doesn’t intend on dropping anyone from his current set-up:

“We’ve a panel of 38 – 22 are first-time inter-county players. So it’s going to take a while for our lads to find our feet. It’s going to take time, and I expressed this last week as well. GAA people in Wexford have to give us time.”

“We’re not in a better position than that we were in last week. We are preparing for the end of the month. We are preparing for a really difficult League campaign. We’ve four games away from home, and three at home. One of those is Armagh, the other is Meath and the other is Offaly who already destroyed us last weekend. That division 3 this year is very tough.”

“We’ll be happy enough that we played better than we did last week , but we’re in no different position than last week – that’s why I wasn’t overly concerned last week. We did take our statutory break for Christmas, we have done a bit of work and we had a few lads to come back – but we are building for a more important date.”

“It’s going to be savagely tough. Westmeath beat Wexford last year by a combined score of about 36-38 points. We’ve to go away to Derry, away to Fermanagh. You could pick at least four teams who have a really good chance of it…and we are trying to survive at that level and to develop a lot of our young lads”

“We’ve lost a lot of players over the last twelve months. A lot of those lads were probably coming to the end of their playing careers, so the time for that transition is there. It sort of all happened at the one time, it’s not happening gradually.”

“Our squad is reasonably well settled. There’s maybe 2 or 3 guys we’d be interested in talking to over the next while and we’ll take it from there – but I certainly have no interest at all in dropping anybody off the panel. It’s work-in-progress.”

“You know, some guys might decide after a while that maybe they’d feel they’re not getting enough game time or they might feel it’s not for them because we’ve so many guys that are new to the amount of effort that’s required to prepare. It’s as settled as it can be I suppose- as settled as any inter-county squad is.”

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Wexford Weekly

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