A VERY SELECT FEW!
Kenna becomes 59th player with 400 appearances
CONOR KENNA recently became only the 59th man in the history of the League of Ireland to notch up 400 league appearances.
It was during Bray Wanderers’ 2-1 success over Drogheda United that the Seagulls skipper racked up number 400 but the 32-year-old has no intentions of stopping at that landmark.
The Dubliner was completely oblivious to the feat until PFAI secretary Stephen McGuinness called him to congratulate him but Kenna does see the merit in it – even if he never it could be possible when he started out at Shelbourne.
“It’s not until someone says it to you that you sit down and think about it. When Stephen said it to me I looked into the other lads who’d done it…good going.
“It’s great. I honestly never even thought about it until I got the phone call to say it was 400 and when I looked into it and see there’s only so many people that have got the 400; I was delighted and hopefully I’ll get a few more.
“When you’re starting off you’d never even think of how many games and seasons it would take to go through that.
“I’ve been in the league a long time and it’s been tough but I wouldn’t be able to do it without my wife, Fiona, who helps out with the kids at home.”
Not only do you have to be extremely talented to explain being selected for action on 400 separate occasions but you also have to be lucky to avoid injuries, something Kenna has done relatively well so far in a career of many highs and few lows.
“Touch wood. When I was at Pat’s, I had my worst one. I tore my tendon on my squad, that was the longest that I was out. That was four to six months maybe. That was the longest one.
“To captain a team to winning the league is great and my family are Pat’s fans as well so that made it even better.
“It’s a tough league, obviously you’ll have your bad days as well but can’t think of anything off hand.”
In November, Kenna will turn 33. He’ll also be unemployed by then with Bray’s last fixture coming on October 27th but Kenna has no notions of hanging up the boots yet and will play on.
Whether that’s at the Carlisle Grounds or not is completely up in the air.
“Touch wood but I feel fit. The lads slag me that I’m up there near the front all the time for running drills so I feel fit at the moment and my health is good so I’ll see how it goes. We’ve four games to go so I’ll take it game by game and hopefully I can play in the four of them.
“I’m not sure. I don’t know what’ll be going on so I’ll take these four games and then see where it lands at the end of the season.”
One potential lure to keep him by the Seaside would be if Wanderers could sneak into a European position, something which Kenna certainly believes is a possibility.
“When you look at the results recently, we’d a great win up in Derry which swings it back our way. They’d a game in hand and they beat Drogheda at the weekend but we can still break that. Rovers are just ahead of them and we’ve still to play Rovers. We’ve four games but there’s a lot to play for in them four games.
“We’ve had a tough season. We’ve had a lot to deal with – on and off the pitch.
“If you look at our season, going into all our games (it’s hinged) on how we were. We can beat any team on the day. We’ve just gone up to Derry and not many teams can go up there and beat them 0-5. It’s all on the day with us and we’re in a good bit of form so nothing is out of our hands.”