Larry O'Gorman

A tough game, a strange game indeed, but we got through it.

We got over the line where previous years we struggled to beat Kilkenny, but I think it was the Liam Griffin factor that got us over the first step anyway.

Yeah, I do indeed.

You know, it's hard to believe, you know, when you look at my hair and you see it grey, all right, you can tell.

But yeah, it seems very strange.

But inside of my own head, you know, I still think it was yesterday, to be honest, when I think back and look back at the memories that I got out of it and the joy that people of Wexford got out of it and the success of winning the Royal Ireland, what it meant to people of Wexford.

30 years ago is a long time, there's a lot of people that have passed in the meantime as well and there's some great heroes of old that would have played hurling for Wexford, the great Ned Wheeler and all these great hurling men as well and of course we lost Seamus Byron who was the selector back then, a great guy, a great man and it's hard to believe it is 30 years ago but our luck hasn't come back yet anyway and we're still praying.

Yeah, absolutely.

You know, he did a wonderful job with his backroom team as well, with Rory Kinsell, as I said, the Lea Seamans Baron and Niamh Fitzpatrick and all.

She was a sports psychologist.

But the year that Clare actually won the All-Ireland in 1995, Liam Griffin had called a meeting.

I think it was a week after Clearwindy All-Ireland and he sat us down at Ferry Carrick Hotel and he had a chartboard full of thoughts and ideas and so on so we were starting to say oh here we go it's only September and we're nearly back at it already so he started going through the chartboard at different months what training we were going through and what

No, but he actually came in late in 94, actually.

And he worked his way through the league.

As you said, into 95, it was a process that he was going through and he was trying to get us in line with him.

And he was doing his best to get us up to speed with everything.

And we were sort of trying to adjust to his thoughts and ideas or whatever.

So...

we did stumble a little bit to be quite honest and actually Mead actually beat us in Belfield and in the Scorty in one of the league games and it was probably one of the lowest times in Wexford Hurling at the time and I'll never forget Liam Griffin at the time you know some nasty things were said and done to him you know on the sideline that day in Belfield and you know it sort of hurted him and it hurted us as well because we said we don't deserve this or he certainly didn't deserve us so he got stuck into things then yes we lost out to Offaly in 95 as I said in September

When he came back, this man had a job to do and he wanted to prove to a lot of people that this is my way or no way and we're going to sit down and do this together.