By Sinead Kehoe

Wexford fans are feeling optimistic ahead of Sunday’s All Ireland Quarter final against a wounded Waterford.

A historic win over Cork on July 9th has gone a long way to diminish doubt about their position in the current hierarchy of hurling.

Lee Chin has played a key role in this restoration of belief, and takes a lot of satisfaction from how the Slaneysiders have turned around their season after the low of that heavy Leinster Quarter-Final defeat to Dublin.

“After the Dublin game we probably deserved a bit of flak, you take what’s coming to you as well, but then again you never set out as a player to put in a bad performance,” says Chin.

“We had a gap of 6 weeks to prepare for the qualifiers and in those 6 weeks we did a lot of hard work and we were very honest in what we had done and we pulled our year back to where we wanted it to be. But we don’t want to stop here, we’d be hoping to go even further again”.

There is no doubt that defeat was tough one to take, but Lee believes it has helped with exposing weaknesses and areas of their game that needed to be given more attention.

“In every game you play you try to search for positives," he says. "Even when games don’t go your way and you know the Dublin game didn’t go our way at all. It did expose a lot of weaknesses in our game and where we went wrong and if you don’t learn from the likes of those games, you’re not going to learn and its definitely something we picked up on.

“We analysed each section of the game and I think over the last couple of weeks we’ve managed to put those things right and as a result we’re in an All Ireland Quarter Final.”

Little tolerance is shown towards excuse makers in the GAA community but it is undeniable that Wexford have been dealt some serious injury blows this year.

Chin himself missed out on the Dublin match due to ligament damage to his knee. Andrew Shore stands out as being a significant loss to the Wexford set-up not only because of his quality as a player but more importantly because of the consistency he had brought over the last few years.

But it appears that this is a team that has not only transformed in terms of performance but also with regard to their attitude and mental outlook. Even when it comes to their injury woes, Chin believes the team has somehow managed to obtain positives.

“When one guy ends up getting injured which is very unfortunate for him and the team, there are other guys who are chomping at the bit to get in," he says. "You kind of look at it as an opportunity and there’s something within a guy that’s waiting for this chance and the second he gets in he’s full of enthusiasm and full of ambition, he just wants to get in and do his best and work really hard.

“The lads that we’ve brought in have really stuck to the task of what they’ve been asked to do and they’ve really added to it. The team’s mentality is that we use it more so for motivation rather than looking at it as a negative. Also we want to do it for the lads who are out injured, we want to push it on for them too.”

That attitude is laudable, but even the best teams are diminished by not having their best players. It’s certainly no coincidence that Wexford’s resurgent form has coincided with Chin’s return to the team.

He was immense two weeks ago against Cork when he scored four points from play and skittled aside Rebel defenders every time he won the ball and charged forward with it.

The technical level of his hurling has improved since he decided to focus totally on the sport rather than combine it with Gaelic Football, but Chin believes his time playing the latter for Wexford helped him develop the raw strength that’s such a big part of his game too.

“It developed me as a better athlete in many ways,” he says. “I always knew when Liam Dunne gave me a call, that’d be it and I’d be going in. In my second year with the footballers I decided to play football and hurling, but after that year was finished I knew what my true calling was. I just wanted to hurl and that was it. Hurling was always my first love without a doubt.”

Figuring out how best to cope with Waterford’s sweeper system is a box that every team must now tick before they play them.

Chin is likely to play a big part in whatever strategy Wexford come up with, because he’ll be operating in Tadhg de Búrca’s sphere of influence. He acknowledges they have to adapt to Waterford’s way of playing, but believes this contest will be decided by more elemental values than tactics.

“It might be a tactical battle but at the end of the day you’ve got to go out and do the fundamental things and get the basics right as well. It might just come down to who wants it the most on Sunday," he says.

Waterford may be the Division 1A side and the bookies favourites to win, but whenever these two teams have met in recent years there has been little between them.

Wexford fans will hope too that their South-East neighbours are vulnerable after their heavy Munster Final defeat to Tipperary, but Chin expects that result will harden Waterford’s resolve rather than weaken it.

“We’re aware that Waterford have come in off the back of a defeat but it’s like what they say about a broken bone, it grows back stronger,” he says.

“They’ll be looking to redeem themselves but we’re confident as a team too. We’re not putting too much emphasis at the moment on the opposition, we’re focusing on ourselves. In the past we’d have put a lot of energy into the opposition and I’ve found over the last couple of weeks the focus is more so on us and I think that’s working very well.”