Dinny Cahill cuts a lonesome figure as he comes slowly up the steps toward the dressing-rooms under the Cusack Stand.

This is the side of Croke Park normally reserved for the undercard of double bills. A few more afternoons like this and his team should finally get to change on the other side of the pitch.

For now, though, the Antrim manager must be consoled. So near and yet so far. "Well, that's the way championship games often pan out," he says. "You have to play it for the 70 minutes. Games are won and lost on mistakes. We made the more mistakes, and were punished for them. It was as simple as that. So we can't have any excuses.

"But sure, they're a good squad, and I think they will come back even stronger because of this result. I felt right down to the final whistle that we could salvage the win out there. We were good enough, no doubt about it. I feel now that Antrim hurling is as good as any southern team."

Cahill knows, however, that Antrim ultimately contributed to their own downfall. Like missing so many of those chances in the first half. Had a few more of those gone over, Wexford might just have crumbled.

"Oh, without a doubt," he says. "We had an abundance of chances there to be taken. And we didn't take them. But that's the fortunes of hurling."

And what about that goal chance in the second minute?

"I was a bit away from it, but to me it looked like a good goal. I'll just have to trust the judgment of the officials.

"But we'll be in Division One of the league next year and that will stand to them even more. Because right now there is a big disadvantage of being in Ulster hurling. With no disrespect to Derry or Down, we don't get the competitive games at the right time of the year.

"We might as well be in another country we feel so far away. I mean, we're five hours away from good intercounty hurling. That's a trip from here to New York. And that's the reality. Teams refuse to come up and play us, so whenever we want a challenge game we have to travel down for it."

Cahill has committed to another year with Antrim, and another year of those five-hour drives north from his home in Tipperary. Some day, he knows, this team will come good.

Yet for John Conran, the Wexford manager, yesterday was the day he prayed they wouldn't. He expected Antrim to give them a hard game and he wasn't disappointed.

"People still talk about Antrim coming down here and being a banana skin," he says. "But this was no banana skin. This was a good team. A very good team. Dinny Cahill has done tremendous work with them and we were up against it all the way.

"We got that rub of the green to get the goal. But so be it. We're delighted to be where we are. And relieved, I can tell you. It was a tremendously hard match to win, but served up a good feast of hurling too. And that's what it's all about.

"And I think we showed again that this team has good character. And came from behind again. It seems to be a trait of this team now. Like they want to give us heart attacks."