DRAIN GAME

Demands on inter-county stars will see them finished in their 20s, says Fennelly

WE CAME expecting another ode to the summer. A celebration of the Greatest Hurling Championship Ever and the feel-good factor that captured the imagination of the public.

Instead, Michael Fennelly wanted to scratch beneath the surface and lay bare the cold reality of life as a player.

Recently, another Kilkenny retiree Tommy Walsh issued the starkest of warnings, that the club scene was being neglected to the extent that ‘we will not have hurling in 10 years’ time… it’ll be just elite’.

Fennelly, with more medals than you could shake a stick at between Kilkenny and his club Ballyhale, is equally trenchant about the divide. He was disillusioned to the extent that he joined the exodus to America for the summer to play ball in San Francisco with the Na Fianna club, only for an old Achilles problem to flare up. He’s now unlikely to make the weekend’s Kilkenny club championship assignment with Ballyragget.

Speaking to highlight the announcement of Electric Ireland’s Minor Star Hurling Team of the Year, he gave his take on a host of topics. He feels managers should be paid. He thinks amateurism can be retained by not paying players but bumping up the existing government-funded grant scheme.

He suggests it’s time to slay the sacred cow of the Munster Championship for a more balanced group format that would involve mixing the top 10 teams into two groups of five. He detailed how Kilkenny have slipped to ‘fifth or sixth in the pecking order’. And insisted inter-county players will be burned out long before 30.

‘The fixtures are a major problem,’ he said, highlighting the stop-start nature of the club scene by way of conversations with two Tipperary hurlers. ‘I was talking to Michael Breen on the way home from America and he said in Tipperary, he had one game left but it didn’t matter, they were knocked out. And I was like, “You’re knocked out, before August?”

‘I couldn’t believe it. That’s a long winter to be waiting in. I was talking to Séamus Callanan earlier on he said if they don’t win their next game they were gone as well.

‘Kilkenny is not so bad in that case that you’re still in the hunt in August, September to stay in the championship.’

Fennelly was enthralled by this year’s race for Liam MacCarthy but believes the entertainment had a knock-on effect.

‘The Championship for the senior intercounty was super this year for supporters, absolutely brilliant. Loads of games, week on week.

‘Fascinating. And all the games were close as well because there is not much between most of them. But for the player, it’s a bit of disaster to be honest,’ he said.

‘This year the League started in late January, so that basically means you have three weeks in January to be getting ready for the League game and that means you’re probably starting in early November, easily. ‘So the whole year is drawn out more for players, there’s a hell of a lot more games, the League is still quite important and you have April off, supposedly, but that wasn’t the case in Kilkenny this year — we played only one club game in Kilkenny and the boys got to the League final, and then in May they were playing Championship for another four games and it’s full on for them, social life is gone. ‘You have to be fully committed to this and I’d say they’re out maybe three or four times a week for seven or eight months, which is crazy, to be honest. ‘For supporters it’s super and everyone is looking forward now already to next year, without a shadow of a doubt, I’m looking forward to it myself as well. ‘But it’s nearly too much at the minute for players and if this continues you will see players retiring earlier again, in their late twenties. ‘You’ll never see a player over 30 play inter-county again if this does continue.’

Fennelly (left) said that subsequent inactivity forced him to head Stateside. ‘And the club scene is getting hammered the whole summer there with no games. That’s why I went off because I said, “What’s the point in staying here? I’d like to be playing over in America.” And it was a nice opportunity to do it,’ he added.

‘But there’s no point in having Mickey Mouse games in the summer as well, to be honest, for the club.

‘Players are going to get less interested and are going to go off and play other sports. Even myself, coming back from the Kilkenny side of things, my interest levels are going to be less because the year is massively drawn out for club players.

‘We trained hard for January, February, March for two games in April. We actually only played one game, and that was us done until August. So what do you do? The intercounty scene is now making it a bit more of a nightmare in that we had a hell of a lot more games, which is great — I’d always said you want more games — but you’ve got to blend it in with the club scene.

‘We used to have club games in between inter-county games and that worked well in Kilkenny, but obviously that has stopped now.’