From heart monitor to Dubs date: Brennan rises to be Meath’s No 1

When Seán Brennan was a young teenager, he played with a heart monitor. That’s how he ended up in goals. “A blessing in disguise,” says the Meath net mind era she prepares for a first championship date with Dublin in Croke Park this Sunday.

Brennan has a shot-stopping background in two codes, soccer and Gaelic football, concentrating full-time on the latter from around 2018 when he helped the Meath minors to conquer Leinster.

“I was put in goals when I was about 13 or 14,” he explains. “I had a heart monitor put in for two years when I was younger because I had an irregular heartbeat so I wasn’t able to be running around too much out the field.

“I kind of thought, ‘Yeah, I’ll do a year or two here and be back out’ but just haven’t seemed to leave the goals since.

“I had the irregular heartbeat since I was a child, so they just wanted to monitor it but it didn’t affect me much. It probably affected my mother more because she couldn’t look at the games, knowing.

“But, to be honest, looking back, it’s probably the best thing that could have happened to me because I don’t think I would have been too good of an outfield player.”

After two years of monitoring, the arrhythmia had “worked itself out” but the Dunderry youngster’s sporting path was already set.

And now, this weekend, the issue is whether collective Me a th hearts will skip a beat in the face of mission impossible.

Close encounters of the Dublin/Meath kind may be a fading relic of yesteryear, but there is still plenty of intrigue ahead of Sunday’s Leinster SFC quarter-final, partly because it will be Colm O’Rourke’s first championship head-to-head with Dessie Farrell, his former ’90s rival.

Then, of course, there is the goalkeeping sub-plot. Brennan didn’t enjoy his finest hour in Longford last Sunday, but he has been O’Rourke’s first choice since the start of last year’s triumphant Tailteann Cup run. The local presumption is that he’ll get the nod again – over the competing claims of the Hogan brothers, Billy and Harry.

Meanwhile, the guessing game continues over who’ll line out in the other goal.

Stephen Cluxton has yet to play in 2024 (he wasn’t even in the match-day 26 for the recent league final defeat to Derry) but after making his competitive comeback in last year’s Leinster semi-final, he never looked back. Eight games, just one goal conceded, a ninth All-Ireland medal and a seventh All-Star.

Might Cluxton resurface this weekend? Watch this space. But if he does, it may be time to go trawling the record books to find out if a 42-year-old ’keeper has ever faced a rival netminder born in the same year (2001) that he made his SFC debut?

During his days as a young soccer shot-stopper, Brennan spent some time in the capital, with Bohemians as well as St Malachy’s of Coolock in the DDSL.

“Loved my time playing it,” he confirms – but then football took over.

In fairness, he came from impeccable stock. His grandfather, Tony Brennan, won an All-Ireland SFC medal in 1967 and subsequently served as a selector with Seán Boylan during those glory days of the late ’80s/early ’90s.

“A big GAA family. It’s definitely at the core of the family,” the 22-year-old DCU student confirms.

Brennan hadn’t even been born when Dunderry’s finest, Tommy Dowd, was inspiring Meath to All-Ireland success in ’96 and ’99.

“Tommy is a legend around the village,” he enthuses. “You didn’t have to have been born back then to see the pictures around the clubhouse and the videos. He’s what every young lad in Dunderry dreams of – going on to play for Meath.”

For Brennan, it came to pass under Dowd’s one-time attacking comrade, O’Rourke. He took ownership of the No 1 jersey at the start of last year’s Tailteann Cup campaign.

“To be honest, I didn’t see it coming at all,” he says.

Six games later, the county was back lifting silverware in Croker and their rookie ’keeper was one of eight Royals named on the Tailteann Cup team of the year.

He then started Meath’s first six league games this year, revealing his own version of ‘mid-career Cluxton’ by nailing eight dead-ball points in a three-game run against Kildare, Cavan and Cork.

Many years earlier, as a nine-year-old, Brennan can remember being in Croker for that fateful 2010 Leinster semi-final – a five-goal Royal rout that remains Dublin’s last defeat in their province.

“You’d like to think with the current crop we have,” he concludes, “that the next four or five years, you don’t know where that could take us.”