Harrison at ease with rapid rise from rookie to chief firefighter

BRENDAN HARRISON’S comfort is found in there being little today can throw at him that will faze him. Not like 12 months ago when, after the biggest, head-swirling week of his life, he pitched up in an All-Ireland final and found himself in Bernard Brogan’s company.

A week earlier, Stephen Rochford had pulled him aside for a quiet word and set him the task; in his first All-Ireland final, his job was to go and muffle the threat of the fourtime All-Star and the most celebrated Dublin footballer of the modern era.

There should have been enough in that conversation to make his knees knock, but it was a week in his life like no other.

It was one that also saw him become a father for the first time when his girlfriend Natasha gave birth to their son, Fionn, and you just know that in the rookie’s manual to surviving an All-Ireland final there is no chapter that deals with that.

He laughs now when he recounts the madness but it turned out to be a blessing in more ways than one.

‘In a way it was a good thing, in that it was a bit of a welcome distraction before my first final,’ admits the 24-year-old.

‘It meant that you were not thinking about the All-Ireland every day, especially when you have a young fella’s nappies to be changing.

‘It was nearly a good distraction to have and I had huge support around me, my mother moved into the house the week before the All-Ireland final to do the night shifts.

‘It’s a great thing to have a kid around the house; it’s another thing to play for.’

It showed too. Five minutes into last year’s final, Kevin McManamon arched a ball in front of Brogan but as he turned after collecting, Harrison stuck in hand and stripped it away to the sound of thunderous approval.

After that, there was no turning back. Brogan, held scoreless, has not started a Championship game since, while that rookie from last year is now wearing an All-Star badge on the breast of his chief firefighter’s uniform.

Harrison’s sense of well-being is such that over this past week he has not needed a distraction to shield him from the task in hand, which most likely demand that he shadows Paul Mannion.

These days he is happy to look in the mirror steeled by the faith invested in him. He has been keeping cloth-tight to some of the very best out there, even if he had his issues with Kerry’s Paul Geaney, who took him for 0-6 from play over two games.

But, in the context of marking perhaps the best inside forward in football while not leaning on an overtly defensive structure, bleeding three points a game against a player of Geaney’s calibre qualifies as close to par. Either way, he is comfortably in his corner-back skin: ‘I suppose at the start, I used to worry a small bit about it, thinking “am I good enough for this”.

‘But they have two legs and two arms just the same as I have. It’s just a matter of getting on with it and hoping that you come out the right side of it.

‘I kind of embrace it, really. I don’t think I worry about it too much.

‘It’s a nice thing to get but it’s a tough job to do. You just have to go out and focus on what you have to do. Each player is different but I’m marking some of the best players around in training here; Andy Moran, Cillian [O’Connor], Conor Loftus, all these fellas. You’re well used to playing at that level.

‘But there’s no such thing as just being a good man-marker. It’s very much being part of a defensive unit. If someone isn’t doing his job out the field, it’s going to have a domino effect on us.

‘The boys out in front of you, right up to the full-forward line, are trying to slow the ball down, getting tackles in. It’s all a domino effect.’

In truth, a chain reaction could also explain why he has gone from a player on the fringes to a pivotal figure in a matter of months.

After breaking into the senior panel in 2013, he spent more time looking down at where the pre-summer cut line would fall than looking up a wall for the starting team.

He seemed on the brink of falling through the trap-door when he managed just two appearances in 2015, a start in a League match against Donegal and a jump off the bench in that year’s Connacht final rout of Sligo.

It took the appointment of Rochford and the opening of a window created by the domino effect of Tom Cunniffe’s retirement, along with injuries sustained by Ger Cafferkey and Chris Barrett, to give him the chance he craved.

But it also said much about his temperament, that he hung in there when it would have been easy to walk away, when his only exposure to game-time was via practice matches. ‘It isn’t easy at all,’ he admits. ‘You can be training week in, week out, and not getting any game-time but when you are a young lad, it is all about working towards something, working towards getting onto the panel. You have to have a carrot ahead of you to work towards. You just know that, if I can get the work done now, get my bit of experience, that it will eventually come,’ says the Aghamore clubman.

From being on the outside looking in, he started every League and Championship game last year and would most likely have done so again this year but for clean-out hip surgery in the close season, which saw him miss the opening two rounds of Division 1 action.

But it is not just the experience he has gained on the field, the changed circumstances off it has also given him a new perspective.

He is committed to family and football and is finding the time to enjoy both, while keeping his career as a project manager in construction on track.

‘Playing inter-county football is a huge commitment especially where work is concerned,’ he admits.

‘At the end of the day, you have got to bring money into the house to support your child, but, look, I am not the first man to have a child either.

‘It definitely makes you manage

It’s great to have a kid in the house, it’s another thing to play for