He’s not into “voodoo”, as he puts it. But at times during his career, Brian Fenton has felt the hand of fate on his shoulder.
How else can it be explained that the 18-year-old who was dropped from the Dublin minor set-up on a walk with selector Noel McCaffrey has turned into one of the great midfielders?
How else can it be that he sits now in the rooms of Parnell Park, just metres away from where he pleaded with Dessie Farrell for a start with the county’s U-21s back in 2014, but is now in the running to be the first player in history to win the Footballer of the Year award three times?
No, it’s not voodoo. There was graft and perseverance and perhaps a gentle brush with fate, serendipity even, that has nudged him from being an ‘almost’ county minor to the game’s Hall of Fame.
“It’s something I’m incredibly proud of,” he says of his football journey at the launch of Staycity Aparthotels as Dublin GAA’s new primary sponsor.
“I always feel so lucky or something to be part of this team. Obviously I hold my own and I’m one of our leaders or whatever, but I just felt that, you know … you look at Whelo (Ciarán Whelan) – and I always come back to this – you’re an amazing player but you’ve just come into a team that just isn’t there or just doesn’t have the depth or the players or whatever.
“So I feel so lucky that I’ve came into that team. And look, we’ve had this chat before about the decisions you make and the road you take and the kind of path you go on. For me, it was always (football), no matter what. This is what I want to do and if I fail at that stage so be it but until I get near that or taste that I’m going to f**king sacrifice to get there.
“I was lucky. I was well supported in university by my family. I didn’t have to go to Limerick for college or that kind of stuff. I’ve kind of made these points before but there was a huge element of luck to it and self-sacrifice and a lot of enjoyment in it as well.”
He references Shane Carthy’s well-documented and bravely tackled mental health battles as one of those sliding doors moments. As Carthy stepped back, Fenton was given his chance with Dublin’s U-21s.
And along the way he met the right people. Ciarán Whelan was on his doorstep in Raheny. The late UCD doyens Brian Mullins and Dave Billings helped him on his way in college.
“There were moments where you could have wobbled, I would say. Like, 18, or whatever, I was like, ‘Do you turn your back on football?’ No.
“Ciarán Whelan was managing our Raheny team at the time and he kind of brought me in. I probably wasn’t up to the standard of senior, I actually played junior for a long time, but he brought me in and was looking after me. And I didn’t have to go to university down the country or anything. I didn’t have to get a part-time job to fund my university and that’s where my family came in. So that element of it was important.
“Then you get in with the likes of Mullins in UCD, or Dave Billings in UCD, and they’re kind of looking after you. Mullins is giving you a bursary for football. You’re not on a scholarship but it buys you a pair of boots and stuff like that. So there’s small little things along the road where you say, ‘Jeez, I was very, very lucky’. There’s absolutely times when you could wobble but thankfully that didn’t happen for me.”
He’s hardly looked back since. Fenton played 44 championship matches before tasting defeat and is now the holder of seven Celtic Crosses, five All-Stars (six presumably by tomorrow night) and Two Player of the Year awards. He is a senior man on the most dominant team the game has ever seen.
Still, he can see now where they fell down after their history-making six-in-a-row. It’s a remarkable thing to say about a team that won so much but as Dublin lost in 2021 and 2022, Fenton insists corners were “cut”. And with the 2023 group expected to return en masse, this off-season has been about maintaining standards across the board.
“There were lads who kind of won their first (this year), so trying to maybe manage that as leaders and monitor it and see how lads are behaving, trying to keep an eye on young lads and if they need a kick. But it’s no more so than ourselves.
“We need a kick up the a**e every now and then and be told to rein stuff in on social media or on nights out or whatever. It’s that kind of way of seeing where the group is at and sussing it out.
“Having won, there was never a question of buy-in. Everyone was happy to do it again with the hope of feeling that again.
“On the flipside of that, having not won in the two years prior to that, it kind of gave us that sense of, ‘OK, we have to relearn how to win and the sacrifice that goes into it’. I would have felt maybe towards the six-in-a-row that there were corners being cut. Myself personally, it went right down to the very basics. Having lost and been unsuccessful, you kind of re-learn what it really takes to win again. Thankfully everything worked in our favour this year.”
And there’s more juice to be squeezed.
“It’s more of a longevity thing for me now. We’ve been unbelievably successful, so being that player for a decade or being that player for 12 years will be what I’ll kind of look back on and be proud of, rather than, ‘Ah sure, wasn’t he great for three or four years’ or, ‘he was part of a great team’ kind of thing.
“Whereas if you show your longevity, I think that kind of stands to you in a way, down the line. That’s what would get me going. And I’m very lucky. You have the likes of James McCarthy with the same kind of mindset. Ciarán Kilkenny is the same. We f**king hate losing. We f**king hate seeing our opponents win – and that’s the truth of it. That, for me, is where the juices come from.”
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