The final day’s games in the Allianz Leagues was packed with drama, as is by now customary. There were stories of disappointment and heartbreak for teams like Roscommon, Wicklow and Clare, while the jubilation in counties like Leitrim, Louth and Antrim will surely provide a huge springboard as those counties prepare for their upcoming provincial campaigns.

It’s unlikely that any county could have been more frustrated than Wexford however. They took care of their business against Longford in fine style, racking up a big lead by half-time and holding on comfortably, but results elsewhere meant that they still missed out on promotion to Division Three.

And since it was Leitrim who went up in their place, it was natural that the issue of the controversial late penalty that gave Leitrim victory in the meeting between the two counties at Carrick-on-Shannon featured prominently in the discussions that took place immediately afterwards.

Some comments distilled the whole matter down to a simple declaration of that one decision costing Wexford promotion, but that’s not a view that team captain Liam Coleman buys into. The Castletown man was at the National Museum in Dublin for the launch of the 2024 Leinster SFC, and he had a very different take.

“You could look at it that way, but it’s one decision over the course of seven matches. If that’s the attitude we’re going to take into the championship campaign, it probably wouldn’t be right, we have to look at ourselves. Like, we let ourselves down against Laois with our performance. Would have been very, very disappointed with it, and it had a massive part to play in it too” said the Castletown club man.

“Páirc Seán Mac Diarmada is a hard place to go and play. We conceded two bad goals, we shouldn’t have been in a position to be caught like that, with a play in the last minute.

“Our ultimate goal was to get out of Division 4 and we didn’t achieve that. But for us that’s where the negativity stops around the league. Everything else was quite positive. We got a lot out of it. We got lots of players consistent minutes; a lot of lads found really good form, which was a great bonus; and I suppose the beauty now is that we have a one-week break and we get to keep playing matches, and hopefully keep that positive momentum going”.

Both the league and the Leinster SFC were disappointing for Wexford in 2023, but there were signs of the potential in the group in the Tailteann Cup, particularly their dominant showing at Glenisk O’Connor Park when they overcame Offaly. At the time, manager John Hegarty spoke about how that was the first time of year when he felt that he was working with anything close to a full deck of players, and now as the 2024 championship looms on the horizon, Coleman feels that things are lining up nicely for Wexford again.

“A lot of the younger players have three-four years’ experience at the moment, which is massive” said the Wexford captain, who himself is heading into a fifth season with the county after first getting a call up from Paul Galvin as a teenager in 2020.

“I think we saw that this year – a little bit more maturity, mentally and physically. Most lads managed to stay on the pitch for the whole league, which was huge.

“I had a good minor team, U20 team – six or seven of them are starting on our team now. Shane (Roche, former manager who preceded John Hegarty) would really have got behind Paudie Hughes, Gavin Sheehan, Eoin Porter, Sean Nolan and really empowered us. That work done by Shane and Anthony (Masterson) has really helped John. He’s built on it.

John is a Wexford legend. He’s got great people in with him too, we’ve got Brian O’Connor from Kerry in with us this year. We’re going from strength to strength”.

So what would define success for this young group?

“It was said that a Wexford football team hasn’t been in a Leinster semi-final since 2014, ten years ago. That’s something that was said at the first meeting to us by the management team after we didn’t get promoted, and that’s a goal we’ve set as a team.

“We know that’s going to be difficult. We’ve Carlow this weekend, which is no easy match. We know Carlow very well, which makes it very difficult … I know five weeks ago we won, but that scoreline didn’t reflect how close that game was. And I’ve no doubt they’ll want to right that wrong”.

Wexford vs Carlow throws in at 2.30pm on Sunday April 7 at Chadwicks Wexford Park,

Wexford. For ticket information Click Here