Keegan looks forward to Wexford's new season

It was bitterly cold and Shane Keegan had just seen his side ship three goals for no reply in a pre-season friendly against Shamrock Rovers at the sports centre in Carlow’s Institute of Technology. It had been a hectic evening for his side against what was a very strong Rovers line-up but he was reasonably pleased with how his lads had performed

“Despite the fact that we’ve conceded three goals”, he said, “I’d probably be more happy with our defensive performance than our attacking performance. Even though they scored three times tonight, two of them were free kicks and to only concede one goal from open play against a team of that quality was quite good. We’re happy enough with that. Our build up play in the first two thirds of the field was really good [but] we need to look at what we’re doing in the final third because it’s a shame to build it up that well and then not be penetrating in the final third. That’s probably the key thing we’ll come away with from tonight.”

The loss, to Cork City, of striker Danny Furlong won’t have helped in terms of Wexford’s options up front and Keegan accepts that replacing him won’t be easy.

“Danny got a lot of goals for us last year and I suppose the fact that he was missing tonight  was shown up that bit more by the fact that we were also missing Tom Elmes and Aidan Keenan. I suppose they’d be the two that would be looking to go in to the role that Danny was playing. Yeah, Danny was a big player for us but it’s up to the boys to step up and fill the gap.”

By and large, the team that Keegan put out against the Hoops was the same one that performed so well for him last season. Would it be fair to say that this was a vote of confidence in the players?

“Absolutely”, he agreed. “But it’s a big vote of confidence in the club as much as anything because a priority for us, never mind recruiting new players, was to hold on to what we have. We finished fourth in the league and we had three or four outstanding performers last year. For Danny to be the only high profile player that we’ve lost is fantastic really, I would have expected to probably lose a few more. But they’ve shown great loyalty and they’re back working really, really hard. So while there mightn’t be a lot of new faces, to hold on to what we have is excellent and the one or two new faces we do have will be big additions. And there might be one or two more to come yet.”

So, does Keegan’s satisfaction with his squad leave him in a positive place going into the new season?

“It does. We’re really looking forward to the season. We probably over-achieved slightly with the standard we set out last year and to finish fourth was probably above what I would have expected. The number one priority for us is to avoid the ‘second season syndrome’ and if we can do that for the first half of the season - if we’re in around fourth, fifth place at the halfway point - then we can talk about a push for play-off spots. But for the first half of the season it’s ‘steady as she goes’.

Finally, with Shamrock Rovers queued up for a competitive fixture in the Leinster Senior Cup, Keegan was certain both teams had come away with some useful pointers.

“Trevor’s no fool, he’ll have picked up things that he’ll look at doing a little bit better, and we’ll certainly pick up things from tonight that we’ll look at doing better. I think probably the biggest difference between a team of this standard compared to what we face on an average week is their full backs. I thought Conor Powell at left back was probably their best attacking player tonight. He was storming forward all night and it’s not something our wingers are used to having to deal with. In our division you don’t get full backs doing that kind of thing. So we’ve seen what’s going to happen with regard to their full backs and that’s something we’ll be looking to address the next time. Overall we’d look to be a bit more competitive than we were tonight when we face them next time around”.