Wallace says Wexford will ‘give it a go'

April 12, 2007

Chris McNulty of Finn Harps Dot Com speaks to Wexford Youths' enigmatic supremo Mick Wallace

Ahead of his Wexford Youths side's first ever trip to the banks of the River Finn, manager Mick Wallace says that he has been enjoying life in the League of Ireland so far and believes his young charges will ‘give it a go' when they visit Finn Park tomorrow night.

Speaking to Finn Harps Dot Com this week, Wallace noted that nothing has taken him by surprise so far in this, his side's first in the senior ranks: “The standard has been very much as I expected it to be,” commented the construction tycoon who has brought senior football to Wexford for the first time.

In previous years, Wallace had been linked to a host of League of Ireland clubs, but this year he decided to plough his funds into his own set up at Newcastle and so Wexford Youths' path to senior football was made.
He has assembled an all-local team at the club and they have enjoyed a fairly good start to the season with a win, a loss and three draws to show from their opening five games in their first campaign in senior football.

“I have seen a lot of the League of Ireland over the years because I would have gone to a lot of matches and so I was already pretty familiar with the league. It has been much as I expected it would be, although it's a bit different in the set up we have here,” said Wallace.

“It's obviously different here to the other clubs as we have a totally amateur set up at Wexford Youths, but we have a talented bunch of young lads. It is a big step up for them too, but what we lack in experience we hope to make up for with a bit of organisation,” he added.

Wallace has enlisted the help of his good friend Pat Dolan as well as former Limerick FC manager Noel O'Connor and so far they have enjoyed a fairly fruitful opening campaign - taking six points from their first handful of games.

Last weekend, it took a late goal from Padraig Amond to rescue a point for Kildare County from their trip to Newcastle - Wexford's home base - after Paul Malone and Anthony Russell had put Wexford into the driving seat. An early goal from Amond had opened the scoring.

For tomorrow night's match, Wexford will be without the services of Gareth Larkin who was sent off last week while there are injury doubts over Anthony Rossiter and Richard Fitzgerald.

“We're missing a couple of very important players, but our lads will give a good account of themselves. Finn Harps will be hot favourites, but we'll go there to give it a go,” said Mick Wallace.

The property developer come football manager was speaking from Turin, Italy where he was stationed on a midweek break to take in the Serie B clash between Juventus and Napoli.

“I don't know if my trip here will do the boys any good or not. I might pick up something,” he quipped.