From jumping county lines to throwing in the towel - Brennan is feeling at home in Bonner’s Donegal
PAUL BRENNAN is laughing as he recalls his induction evening with the Donegal footballers.
In the dressing room after a training game, he was using politeness as a weapon to kill the awkwardness only new boys know, when it went pear-shaped.
‘I took Leo McLoone’s towel by accident when we went for a shower.
‘And because I was the new boy, I was trying to be all nice to everyone and keep the head down but the next thing he comes out of the shower roaring “which one of ye f ***** s stole my towel” and then I realised it was me.
‘You could call it an icebreaker because, after that, the politeness went out the window,’ he says, with a hearty chuckle.
And he has much to laugh about as he makes the most of the second chance he craved for so long.
When he transferred from Melvin Gaels to Bundoran in the deep winter of 2014, he made more headlines than anything he had managed in his five years as a Leitrim footballer.
That is more a measure of the shadow in which Leitrim football lives than an indictment of his own ability as a footballer.
However, in the GAA’s silly season, the news that the Leitrim full-back was transferring to get a shot at Rory Gallagher’s new-look Donegal team got inevitable traction.
It didn’t work out quite like that. Two years passed before he was called into the panel, only making his competitive debut against Kerry in last season’s Allianz League opener.
Neither was it a mercenary act; Brennan gew up in Bundoran, a mere five miles as the crow flies from his Kinlough base.
It is where he went to school, it is the town he socialised in and it is the town of his long-time partner Coleen Granahan – whose father Seamie was corner-forward in 1972 when Donegal won their first Ulster title.
His only regret about making the decision to transfer is that he did not do so earlier.
‘I was 25 when I transferred and I am turning 29 now so I should have probably done it in my early teens. I just felt then for my own sake that I needed to change because I was at a stage where I was thinking about giving up altogether.
‘My mind was not in the right place to commit to Leitrim and football.’
It is not that he does not think fondly of Leitrim, he is still a supporter and his former club-mate Emyln Mulligan is a close friend but there is only so long you can get your kicks from getting a kicking.
He made his Championship debut for Leitrim in 2011, memorably beating Sligo.
It would hardly be a harbinger of things to come – two victories in the pre-season FBD league the only other real highlights – as he settled into a career where the glory was never likely to extend beyond the honour of playing.
Last year, Brennan’s only glimpse of Championship football was a five-minute cameo off the bench against Longford in the qualifiers.
However, his instinct to play as an aggressive, front-running half-back fits in more snugly with Declan Bonner’s game-plan and he made his first Championship start against Cavan a fortnight ago. ‘This year, Declan and his backroom team have given a lot of confidence to footballers in Donegal and with confidence comes a better brand of football,’ says Brennan, who concedes that the move away from Gallagher’s defence-based gameplan brings out more in his own game and approach.
‘It is a style that suits me. I like to get going forward and the way we are trying to play just suits me down to the ground.’
And after the long road getting here, days like today when he gets to play Derry for the first time are ones which he will treasure more than most.
‘The funny thing about this is I spent so many years looking in at it that I really do appreciate being part of this group.’