By John Harrington

A nice little nugget of GAA lore is that former Taoiseach Brian Cowen unwittingly gave Wexford a psychological edge before the 1996 Leinster Senior Hurling Final against his native Offaly.

RTE sent cameras down to the Faithful County in the days before the match to capture a sense of the atmosphere building and Cowen featured large in one segment that was aired on the news when he was filmed singing the ‘Offaly Rover’ with a bunch of friends in a local pub.

Wexford manager Liam Griffin was sitting at home in front of his television and felt his hackles rising when Cowen warbled ‘A rover I have been and a rover I will stay’.

“They were singing the 'Offaly Rover' and I suddenly thought to myself, "'The Boys of Wexford', 'Kelly the Boy from Killane', '98!”, Griffin told GAA.ie

“And there's the Offaly Rover' being roared around Kinnity in the middle of the night! We've got real songs to sing! This is bullshit!"

“That was me building myself up. That was me, to use a sports psychology term, finding an anchor. Quite unwittingly, because I wouldn't have even called it an anchor at that stage. I decided that this was where we needed to make a stand. Who the f**k are we?

“So I got excited then and I got up at five o'clock in the morning and I walked the beach in St. Helen's up and down. I was saying to myself, "This is much more than a hurling match."

“I had gone into too many dressing-rooms as a youngster with lads saying, "It's only a game, lads, go out and hurl your hearts out."

“This was not only a game. This was way bigger than any game. I started to think, "We're actually fighting for a way of life here. This hurling is on the way out in this county.

“We haven't won an All Ireland Final since 1968. We're nobodies now. We're hurling for the actual saving of this God damn game here."

“And then I thought of my own Dad. I thought of George O'Connor's dad who was now dead too. All the matches that my father brought me matches as a kid and all the matches that George's father came to as well.

“So I actually thought, and this sounds mental, but that we were actually fighting for the dead people who gave us all of this as well.

“They brought us to League matches in Enniscorthy and New Ross and the places packed to the brim. We couldn't even get crowds anymore. We had been beaten by Meath last year. We were fighting for a way of life!

“So, what do you do about that? I went home and wrote a speech. And I've never written a speech, I just speak from my heart. And when it's good it's good, and when it's bad, it's bad. I just try to say what's in my heart. I went back and asked myself, "Who are we? Who are we?" And then I just said, "Look at your names. Great Wexford names. Flood, Kehoe, O'Connor. Great Wexford names. So why should we fear Offaly? Why should we fear Offaly? Look at where we've come from. Think of the people who have put us here."

“So I wrote a speech, and the speech was all about who we were and where we came from. And I actually traced the place-names. I spoke to Niamh (The Wexford team’s sports psychologist Niam Fitzpatrick) about what I was going to do and I said, "Am I going to drive them mental?"

“She said, "No, I think it's brilliant." I said, "I want them to come back into Wexford with that Cup. So I'm going to stop the Bus."

“Then she said, "Walk them out of Wexford then again. And let them walk back in again with it." I think she said that to me, I'm not sure. But I did involve her and we did discuss it. I showed her the speech and she said, "That's awesome stuff. Do it, do it, do it!"

Griffin didn’t tell anyone else about his plan so when he asked the Wexford team bus-driver to stop just before the Wexford-Wicklow border on the way to the Leinster Final and then ordered everyone off, there were quizzical looks all around.

“I didn't tell Rory, and I didn't tell Seamus (team selectors Rory Kinsella and Seamus Barron) about it. It was the first thing I never told them.

“Because I was afraid they'd try to talk me out of it and make me lose my nerve. So, I wrote it out and it was short and snappy. One of the great speeches, 'The Gettsburg Address', is a very short speech, so I said this can't be a long one because it would bore the shit out of them.

“So it's going to be sensible. I remembered when I was in a dressing-room listening to lads talking about Vinegar Hill and thinking, "What a load of bollocks!"

“It was fierce important to me to make the players understand that this was way bigger than a game. This is not just a hurling match, you're fighting for a way of life, you're fighting for dead people, you're fighting for yourself and all the fellas with you.

“Every game you ever played was all about getting to a day where you could do this. Think about all the games when you're a kid, they were all about leading you to this day. And here is the day laid out in front of us.

“We're going to walk out of Wexford and we're going to walk back and we're going to do whatever it takes to bring that Cup back to this County tonight. That's what we're focused on from the minute we start walking.

“And if that means bringing death itself, then we put our bodies on the line today. We do everything we're supposed to do and you know what you're supposed to do. Tackle, hook, block, discipline. They're the things that you've got to do. And if you do that, then you give us a great chance of bringing back that Cup. And if we resolve to do it, then nothing's going to stop us. We're ready. And we're going to walk out of Wexford.

“I remember Niamh saying to me, "You make them deep-breathe when they're walking up that road." So I said to them, "Breathe long and hard, we're walking out of Wexford. And when we put our feet outside this County, you remember that when we put them back in here we'll be carrying that Leinster Cup.”

“So we walked out of Wexford. I needed something big to try to raise us above the norm. To try to get us to get up there. To not be afraid to get up there. Something bigger than us. We were up at Cahore point, so from there down to Curracloe, from Curracloe back to Rosslare, and from Rosslare to Fethard and the Hook, and all the way back to Vinegar Hill, through Rathnure.

“There's who we are, that's where we come from. And that's what we are and we should be proud of ourselves. So when they sing the 'Offaly Rover' it doesn't mean a whole lot to me, but these songs of Wexford sure mean a lot to me. And they should mean it to you and they mean a lot to your parents before you.”

Griffin’s psychological ploy is now remembered as one of the great GAA managerial master-strokes of all time, but in the moment he struggled to gauge just what sort of impact it was having on the players.

“The thing that struck me was that nobody said a word,” he says. “That was eerie. There wasn't a word being spoken as we walked. I think I may have said we'll walk out in silence with a steely determination that no-one was going to stop us this time.

“Don't forget, Storey and the boys had had nightmares against Offaly. Not even getting a score from play for several years in League Finals, Leinster Finals, Leinster semi-finals. So we had a lot of demons to erase, and that must have been surely going through their heads.

“We had a good game-plan. Rory McCarthy was going out to the middle of the field, he'd be turning and coming back. He was going to pick up all the breaking ball.

“He was going to run at their defence all day long. So they knew there was a system that they could play. Billy (Byrne) was on the line and everyone knew he would come on at some stage for Gary (Laffan).

“They knew there were lots of methodology going to come into the whole system as well. We were not going to just go up there and take it like we had every other year. We were going up with a methodology this time.

“We were going to play a hurling match on our terms. Every match we played we wanted to play it on our terms, and in every single Championship match we played that year, bar Dublin, we got the game played on our terms so we were always comfortable.

“So, anyway, I got back into the bus and I sat down beside Rory Kinsella. There was silence for a minute, and he said to me, "Where the f**k did that come from?! You know now that if we lose this match you'll be the laughing stock of County Wexford."

“I said, "Rory, I don't give a shit! I don't give a shit! I don't care if they ridicule me to hell and back. I have to put me on the line as well. So let it happen.

“And, sure, what about it? At least we tried to give it our best shot." Now, Rory didn't say what he said to be derogatory, he was just trying to break the eerie silence.”

Offaly, for their part, came into the match in a confident frame of mind.

As Griffin has alluded to, the midlanders had been giving Wexford ‘nightmares’ for years, and by now had an innate self-belief that they were their masters.

"We always felt that we could beat Wexford," said Johnny Pilkington, who played midfield for Offaly in the 1996 decider, in an interview with the Irish Independent in 2004.

"It was no different in 1996. They hadn't beaten us for nearly 20 years, but I suppose a bit of tiredness had crept into us at that stage. We had a few hard years behind us.

“My own firm belief is that Clare in 1995 and Wexford in 1996 were no fitter or better than any other year but they had the belief they could win from Loughnane and Griffin."

Wexford’s self-belief was tested early on when a Billy Dooley goal helped Offaly into a four-point lead, but the Slaneysiders didn’t waver.

Damien Fitzhenry smashed home a penalty to give them a timely boost, and by half-time they led by 1-10 to 1-9.

Wexford moved five points ahead in the 54th minute when Tom Dempsey scrambled a goal to the back of the net, but they faced one last test of their mental resolve when Michael Duignan hit back with a goal for Offaly.

That might have been the cue for previous Wexford teams to doubt themselves, but Griffin had hard-wired self-belief into that ’96 team and they finished with a flourish as Tom Dempsey and Martin Storey fired over a machine-gun burst of points to seal a 2-23 to 2-15 victory.

The fact that Wexford had won a thrilling match in style against high-quality opponents made the achievement of claiming the county’s first Leinster title in 19 years all the more special in Liam Griffin’s eyes.

“That was my greatest level of satisfaction because of how well we played that day,” he says. “And because we were playing such a great hurling team, we were able to express ourselves and still play hurling to that level.

“We couldn't do that again for the game against Galway, it was a different match-up. And then the All-Ireland Final we had to go a different style altogether because we were down to 14 men. We could express ourselves against Offaly.

“There were a few hardy boys on it, but they were a good hurling team. And they were a team that were going to let us hurl. And we really hurled well.”

The celebrations that followed Wexford’s victory were raucous. So much so, that the plan to walk with the Bob O’Keeffe Cup back over the border from Wicklow to Wexford had to be shelved.

“No, we didn't, because it just pure mental,” says Griffin. “The place was swamped, there were cars beside us, and it was dangerous.

“I was getting really worried that someone would get killed and it would destroy everything. There were fellas hanging out of windows of cars and going berserk.

“There were bonfires everywhere and the whole lot. The whole place just went mental the whole way down the road. We had to go through Arklow in those days and there were people everywhere in Arklow as well because Wexford and Wicklow are very close.

“When we're playing well in hurling, Wicklow come out to support us. There was a pipe band in the middle of Arklow Town. The Wicklow people were fantastic. I wrote to the Wicklow papers afterward thanking them for their support because they were brilliant for us.”

Griffin had no problem letting his team celebrate with gusto over the course of the next couple of days.

A long wait had been ended for the Bob O’Keeffe Cup and it was only right that the achievement be savoured.

It might have been understandable if Wexford had been happy with their lot at that stage considering how much a Leinster title meant to them, but Griffin was confident they would go on to win the All-Ireland title that subsequently followed it.

“First of all, we had the Cup and we let them have a couple of nights,” he says.

“There was a thing arranged in Wexford town, the Mayor or someone organised something in the middle of the Town. We hadn't won one in a long time so we said we might as well, of course, no problem.

“So they let their hair down for those couple of nights and then we said, ok, we've five weeks until the next match which is too long by the way, crazy stuff.

“Five weeks before a provincial Final and an All-Ireland semi-final is the craziest thing of all time. And another four or five weeks to the Final? 10 weeks for two matches? You'd have played three World Cups in that time!

“We actually went out to Curracloe to the beach and we got Sean Colllier to bring them for a bit of a run down the beach and into the sea for a mess around. We just said, "Look it, what's next lads? Are ye happy enough?

“Ye have re-established yourselves which is great and everyone thinks it's brilliant. But have you had enough? Is that it? Do we just pull up the shutters now on a great year. Everyone is going to think ye're great for the rest of your lives anyway, so what do you want to do?"

They actually said, "No, no, no, we're not happy with that." So I said, "Fine, but we've got to really want to do it. We've got to forget this now, lock that Cup away, and be finished with it because it's done and dusted and we need to move on if you want to.

“But you need to decide that. We need to up the training a bit, we need to get ourselves geared up for a Galway team that beat you by 10 points in the League. I think we're going to beat them in the All-Ireland semi-final, it's the right draw for us."

“No disrespect to Antrim, we didn't want to play them. We wanted to keep going and win this All-Ireland the hard way. We had two hurdles left to climb, and the only two teams that had beaten us that year had been Galway and Limerick. Nobody else had beaten us.

“They had both beaten us in the League. So I was saying to the players, wouldn't it be nice to be able to say that you met them all, and you beat them all. That was a prize as well. It would bring us a bit of redemption.

“No-one would be able to turn around to us and say, "Ah but we beat you in the League." Yeah, ye did, but we beat ye when it mattered.

“Everyone quickly bought into the message. Now, we had the advantage of having a mature crowd of guys that had been through the hard times, that had now broken through the glass ceiling a bit, and I suppose they were ready for going forward.

“They weren't giddy with the excitement of having won Leinster. Don't forget, they had also brought into a process. So it wasn't a major job to get them to raise the bar again and say, "We can do this."