Wounded Wexford at a crossroads ahead of Kilkenny clash

It has been 29 years since Wexford were dancing at the crossroads but are their hurlers standing at another one now?

The post-season retirements of three of the Leinster-winning side of 2019 - Diarmuid O'Keeffe, Matthew O'Hanlon and Liam Óg McGovern - and continued absence of players like Paudie and Oisín Foley has left manager Keith Rossiter with a rebuilding job, that has been exacerbated by an injury crisis.

Key men like Conor McDonald (hamstring) and full-back Liam Ryan (unspecified surgery) are expected to miss the majority of the league.

Cathal Dunbar is back in the starting line-up to face Kilkenny today and Damien Reck is on the bench after a hamstring injury but Jack O'Connor (also hamstring) is left out after playing the second half of the defeat to Tipperary as only seven of the XV beaten by Clare in last year's All-Ireland quarter-final start.

The return of talismanic forward Lee Chin from his travels has come too late to play any part this weekend but his experience will be badly needed for the rest of a campaign that is already shaping up to be fight for survival.

Speaking before Christmas, but anticipating the retirement of the aforementioned trio and more, 1996 All-Ireland winner Tom Dempsey said: "They will be a huge loss when they're gone and very hard to replace. Lee Chin is probably one of the top three Wexford hurlers I've seen in my lifetime.

"With Wexford, we always seem to pull ourselves out of the quagmire and come up with a few results when it matters. But I am a little bit worried about how we'll cope over the next few years when these lads start to retire.

"We have some very good young fellas and while we're not winning national titles we are competing well at U20 and minor and we'll have a good