THE YEAR B.C.
Bertie Ahern was Taoiseach, Mary McAleese was in the Áras and a pint cost £2.10. The Good Friday Agreement was signed, Gay Byrne was hosting the Late Late Show, President Clinton came to visit and the country mourned the loss of Dermot Morgan. Kevin Fenne
“I didn’t want to be falling
out with anyone and I hadn’t the heart for it”
WHEN RTÉ ran the series ‘20 Moments That Shook Irish Sport’, it featured that summer of 1998, a summer of drama and chaos and upset in keeping with the entire season.
Jimmy Cooney’s errant timekeeping in the All-Ireland semifinal replay between Clare and Offaly was the moment that made the cut, leading to the Offaly fans taking to the pitch and the second replay that would alter the course of history and the eventual winners of the Liam MacCarthy Cup.
But there was a moment earlier in the year that also shook up Irish sport – DJ Carey’s snap retirement at the age of just 27. That was just one of the bombshells Kilkenny manager Kevin Fennelly had to deal with in his sole season in charge.
At the time, he tried his best to defuse the situation when asked if he thought he could see a way back for one of the players of his generation who was only entering his prime. ‘I don’t know. I can’t answer that. I’ve been asked it a hundred times. It’s very hard to think that he hasn’t the desire anymore.
‘But he’s always maintained that he wouldn’t stay in hurling too long. I remember saying to him about the All-Stars that he’d probably end up with more than anyone in three or four years’ time and he said he wouldn’t be hurling in three or four years.’
Carey’s decision summed up the sense of turmoil around Kilkenny hurling at the time. Nickey Brennan would go on to lead the GAA as president after serving as county chairman and manager. When he stepped down after the 1997 season, it came against the ugly backdrop of his brother Canice being jeered by a section of the crowd.
That low point came in a National League semi-final defeat by Limerick that stretched to 10 points, though at that stage of the strangely split season Kilkenny had already exited the Championship. Right then, Kilkenny hadn’t won a Leinster title since 1993 when the county had completed an AllIreland double. The future was uncertain, with Fennelly taking up the baton as manager after he led Young Irelands to a first county title in 1996 in his first year and to the final 12 months later. The dropping of DJ Carey’s goalkeeping brother Martin for the latter stages of that Championship was not a call he wanted to make. Although Fennelly and DJ himself denied it was a subplot to Carey’s shock decision, it still became part of the rumour mill and a big part of the Kilkenny story for 1998. ‘It affected us big time,’ admitted Fennelly a decade on. ‘There was so much emphasis on it. People never let up on it. When it started, it roller coasted. I felt there was nothing I could do about the situation and I spoke about it to DJ. It was DJ’s personal choice.’
Back then, he made the telling point that it was DJ who first broke the news of his appointment to him and was the first to shake his hand.
‘We were over in Valderrama the year before at the Ryder Cup. DJ had two tickets and I was the one who went with him and he was the one who told me. I always got on with DJ and still get on with all the Careys. Sure DJ’s sister and my daughter go on holidays every year.’
Before he married and settled in Gowran, Fennelly was one of seven brothers on a storied Ballyhale Shamrocks team and won a remarkable nine county medals and three club All-Irelands.
The family name is woven into the tapestry of Kilkenny hurling and after playing number two to Noel Skehan for years, he won Leinster medals as goalkeeper in 1986 and ’87. When Fennelly made the transition to county manager a decade later though, Kilkenny’s drought in Leinster alone was heading for five years.
Carey’s retirement u-turn was just another twist in a season packed with so much drama. Fennelly had to weather another minor storm over the exclusion of long-standing servant John Power but seemed to have pulled all the necessary strands together by guiding Kilkenny to that first Leinster title since 1993.
In keeping with a surreal summer, that provincial final victory over Offaly prompted Babs Keating’s ‘sheep in a heap’ line that led to the Offaly manager’s departure and paved the way for Michael Bond to step in.
And there was a further layer to the Leinster final, too, when it was Carey who turned the game decisively in Kilkenny’s favour by rattling two 20-metre frees to the net on an afternoon when his Young Irelands teammate Charlie Carter was the stand-out performer with 1-5 from play in a Man of the Match display.
Nobody knew then that Kilkenny and Offaly would meet again in a unique all-Leinster AllIreland final and that Offaly would find a way to turn the tables – again in such dramatic fashion with Brian Whelahan’ proving the match-winning hero after struggling with sickness in the build-up and being switched from defence to attack.
When I spoke to Fennelly on the eve of the 2008 All-Ireland final with his successor Brian Cody was on the verge of a three-in-arow having already won three AllIrelands in 2000 and 2002-03, he revealed that after the ’98 final defeat, he could so easily have been at the helm again in ’99, rather than Cody.
‘When I got this job the county board gave me a two-year contract. After a year, I got to the AllIreland, I felt that I didn’t have the appetite to go on. Between one thing and another, the day I was going back in to get ratified, I changed my mind.
‘In fairness to them, the lads [county board] were trying to get me to stay. I just said, “No”. I don’t want to go in to it now but I wasn’t 100 per cent happy with a few things that were going on and I didn’t see a quick fix.’
CERTAIN things certainly didn’t work in his favour heading into that final in 1998. Centre-forward Michael ‘Titch’ Phelan was ruled out with a shoulder injury while a broken finger sidelined John Hoyne.
Then there was the manner in which Offaly built up momentum via the back door and the famous trilogy with Clare despite the fallout from the Leinster final defeat that cost Keating his position.
‘I remember Babs going off the field that day,’ recalled Fennelly, ‘the hurley across his belly, and he saying to me, “They’re at nothing, anyway.” I said, “Keep your powder dry Babs because you never know, we could still meet in an All-Ireland final.”’
He also addressed Power’s omission. ‘I wanted a centre-forward more than anyone. The only thing I’d ask is, “Where were Kilkenny for the previous five years?” And it wasn’t about John Power. There were a lot of All-Stars there, a lot of good players, but they just weren’t getting the results.
‘I didn’t want to be falling out with anyone. I hadn’t the heart for it. There was too much rubbish written about that and the DJ thing in ’98 for my liking.’
So he decided at the 11th hour not to go forward for a second year, paving the way for Brian Cody to come in.
Speaking in 2008, he revealed how he had nothing but admiration for Cody’s Kilkenny and the standard set. ‘Well I think they are up there with the best, whether they win the All-Ireland or not. That argument will always be there. It’s like who is the greatest boxer: Rocky Marciano or Cassius Clay?
‘As far as I’m concerned, there is no team in any era better than them. They have beaten everyone that they have met. This argument will always go on that hurling isn’t as good as it was in the past – I don’t agree with that.
‘They are the most successful team ever over any 10-year period and are on the verge of a three-ina-row. We’ve had great teams in the past but we’ve failed to do it. So if they do pull it off, for the first time in nearly 100 years, it will be a massive achievement.’
They pulled it off – and that wasn’t even the halfway point for Cody, who remains at the helm in 2020 with an untouchable list of achievements. An era that was hard to envisage during the roller coaster ride of 1998.