Raheny may be a small club but they’ll have a big say in Dubs’ drive for five
NO matter what age group is lining out on pitches nine and 10 in St Anne’s Park, they often have a familiar figure, standing on the sideline, encouraging them. Brian Fenton. The genial giant who also happens to be a Dublin footballer that is undefeated in 27 Championship games and counting – and Raheny man to the core.
‘He only lives a short stroll from St Anne’s Park, so he will often be down there,’ club PRO Alison Dempsey says. One of their own. The same approachable and affable member of the neighbourhood he has always been, irrespective of the number of All-Ireland medals sitting at home.
There are stories within the story of this remarkable Dublin team. Every player in Croke Park last Sunday had his own tale. In the final seconds, a desperate Tyrone launched one final high bomb into Colm Cavanagh. It never reached him. Brian Howard sprang from the ground and fielded the ball in a fashion that clubmate Ciarán Whelan would have been proud.
In Raheny, they weren’t surprised. Matt Dempsey, statistician for the club senior side, played basketball with Howard when he was younger. ‘And he has the best hang-time in our team. It was like three and a half to four seconds. That was seriously impressive and down to his pure athleticism.’
Senior team manager Pat Ivory feels it down to something else, something that can’t be coached, . ‘That interception was down to his timing. It is like the best strikers in soccer going up for headers. They time their jump perfectly to connect. It is instinct. And that is what Brian Howard has. He has instinct to snuff out danger, instinct to be in the right place at the right time.’
Diarmuid Connolly had earmarked Howard for greatness in an interview last year. But in Raheny, he was marked out as something special a long time before that. ‘In the club, we always said that he was going to be the next Paul Flynn. And that is what he has shown this year, with the seamless way he has gone into the senior team,’ says club chairman Mark O’Connor.
Howard was the youngest Dublin player to collect a Celtic Cross last year, just a year out from winning the final All-Ireland Under 21 title under Dessie Farrell.
Fenton, of course, is different. He didn’t attract the attention of the city’s talent-spotters when he was younger. Ivory has been nurturing Fenton since he was four years of age. ‘He was always a leader, the whole way through. His age group were very successful and that was down to Fento.’ That Raheny team built up a rivalry with Castleknock, who had Ciarán Kilkenny in their ranks, and Ballymun Kickhams, who had John Small. Fenton. Kilkenny. Small. The three former rivals celebrated together on Sunday night. Firm friends. Important blocks in the greatest Dublin team of all-time.
Fenton’s Raheny side, that included Graham Burke who now plays with Preston North End in the English Championship, went unbeaten for five years from under 11 to 16 years of age. Ivory remembers Fenton as the leader of the pack, but the Dublin minor selectors didn’t agree.
They reckoned he was too small but Ivory saw something different. ‘He is a phenomenal reader of the game. One of the best I have seen. And he has been like that since he was five or six. If there was danger 30 yards away on the field, he would get there. He would read where a pass was going before the opponent delivered it.’
Athleticism was in Fenton’s genes. His late mother, Marian, was the swimming coach in DCU. His uncle David swam in the Moscow Olympics. If Raheny didn’t grab his heart, Fenton might have been a star in the pool.
At around 17 and 18, he went through a remarkable growth spurt. ‘Myself and Paul Dempsey reckoned that he grew 13 inches inside 12 months,’ Ivory recalls. ‘We kept an eye on it. He filled out and blossomed. His father, Brian senior, always said to me that he would because he’s a tall man and Marian was tall, too.’
In the club now, they can use Fenton as a prime example to keep working on your game.
‘Some lads can get disheartened if they don’t make the development squad at U14 or U15 and might actually think about drifting away from the game,’ says Colm Cudd, the club’s coaching officer. ‘I always remind them of Brian Fenton. I always say that Fento didn’t make the minor team and look at him now.
‘We are so lucky to have in our club a living and breathing example that not making the development squads doesn’t have to be the end of the road. They can go on to play for Dublin because Brian did.’
Within a few miles radius of St Anne’s Park, there are nine GAA clubs. In that sort of environment, Raheny have always struggled to assert themselves, especially with the powerhouse of St Vincent’s up the road. But they have always prided themselves on producing Dublin footballers.
‘Brian Fenton grew up wanting to be Ciarán Whelan, Brian Howard grew up wanting to be David Henry. The connection has been there,’ says Mark O’Connor. There are more than 80 kids at the nursery on Friday evening and Saturday morning, four and fiveyear-olds wanting to be Fenton and Howard. This cycle of success is likely to continue in Raheny and clubs around them.
‘This is a small club, and we are surrounded by a lot of other GAA clubs, who are bigger than us. So we were always focused on developing the skills of the game with young players, and that is why you see Fento and Brian Howard being such good highfielders. It is not a coincidence that Ciarán Whelan was known for his high fielding, and so are these two lads,’ O’Connor says.
If you want to have a successful club, especially when you are surrounded by so many other clubs, you have to get your player development right,’ O’Connor points out. ‘And now, we can saw that we have the best midfielder in the country and potentially the best half-forward in the country.’
Only one of the stories within the story of this extraordinary team.