Richie Hogan highlights one career regret from playing against Wexford

There’s no doubt that Kilkenny’s Richie Hogan has gone down as one of hurling’s all-time greats…

The Kilkenny man retired from the inter-county hurling scene in 2023 after the Championship. The versatile Kilkenny player retired with glowing accolades – winning everything that could be won multiple times over during his career. However, the Kilkenny man still thinks about other days that went against them. One such day was in 2023 in Wexford Park, when Kilkenny had the opportunity to relegate Wexford in the last game of the Leinster Senior hurling championship round-robin stages.

It was a game which seen Wexford cling on to their status in the Leinster Championship, winning on a score-line of 4-23 to 5-18 in an incredible spectacle.

“Wexford had slipped up against Westmeath in the Leinster round-robin stages. A Kilkenny win that day would have relegated Wexford to the Joe McDonagh Championship for 2024. We really didn’t like that Wexford team and nothing would have been more satisfying than sitting down on a Saturday evening the following summer, pulling out the phone, and swiping through Buff Egan’s snapchat stories, seeing them tour the country playing Kerry, Kildare and Meath.”

“We weren’t ruthless enough to take advantage of it on that occasion, and I firmly believe that the lack of killer instinct that day festered in the group and was a huge contributing factor to not putting Limerick away in the last 20 minutes of the All-Ireland,” Richie Hogan said.

Richie Hogan was writing about the experience and his regret in his new autobiography “Whatever It Takes.”

While he cannot speak for his whole team, Hogan provides a unique insight into the mind’s of the Kilkenny players on that day. Wexford last won the Leinster SHC in 2019, with Kilkenny winning all the Leinster hurling titles since then.

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