‘I will have a couple of sleepless nights thinking about those’ – Keith Rossiter laments Wexford defeat

“I haven’t looked back on Rory’s first tackle after 15 seconds yet but I’d a good view from where I was and it didn’t look to be that dangerous to warrant a yellow card after 15 seconds,” manager Keith Rossiter said as they exited the championship at the quarter final stage.

“But these are the little things that cost you on a big day like today. You are not going to beat a team of Clare’s calibre with 14 men.”

There was the prevailing sense of a missed opportunity because of the O’Connor dismissal.

“We’re devastated to be honest with you, we prepared really well for it, the lads were in good form and just for the way it went, it’s very disappointing. You know, you throw everything at it, no different to any other team, our lads put in the same amount of effort. We’re just missing a small bit of luck, I think. It’s happened to us too often this year. We probably could be in a Leinster final but for a decision or two.

“Little things like that cost us all year. You go into the Kilkenny game, the last game of the (Leinster) championship, and a penalty being awarded (for a foul) two or three yards outside of the box.

“You look at today, that first yellow card. I don’t know who is up there looking down on us not giving us the bit of luck but those are hard decisions to get over. I will have a couple of sleepless nights thinking about those. It is something that is not sitting that well with me at the minute.”

He felt the first yellow card – like the first, for a foul committed on David Reidy – was a soft award.

“I’d a good view of it. It was an arm tackle, I think it was up around his shoulder. I am not on for lads getting hit in the head in any regards, I’d be in favour of yellow cards for that, but when you go in to give a tackle and a lad side-steps you and you catch him around the shoulder, that’s a warning, you know, 15 seconds into a match. There is no badness in it and that came back to bite us.”

The task wasn’t helped by a slow start, with Wexford trailing by seven points in the first half before getting back level.

“I wasn’t happy with the first 15 minutes, I thought we were slow out of the blocks. We weren’t tight on our men. We let Clare play around the ball and we were chasing shadows. But we got to grips with it, we got the penalty, which was great, I thought our dander was up. And when the sending off came it went flat again.”

The defeat marked the end of Rossiter’s first year as Wexford manager.

“I wasn’t planning on it ending this way. But I said to the lads inside that I always knew that inter-county management was going to be a roller-coaster. Some highs and some lows. You know there is plenty to learn from this year, year one I suppose of our management term.

“But in fairness to the players they dug deep all year. We had a long journey down from Belfast after (Leinster championship) round two. In fairness to the players they answered everything back. We got Galway. Then we moved down to Carlow. Gave Kilkenny a lot of questions to answer in Nowlan Park as well. One or two decisions that had they gone the other way we could be in a Leinster final but that’s ifs and buts and coulds.”