Dublin’s midfield cupboard suddenly looks rather bare with the surprise news that Brian Fenton is calling it a day at 31, hot on the heels of his venerable mucker, James McCarthy.
Fenton’s departure feels like even more of a landmark moment, the clearest sign that the great Dublin team of the 2010s is shuffling off the stage.
Such was Fenton’s influence that some commentators are even pondering today whether the Leinster Championship (d’you remember that?) may not even be a done deal in 2025.
The midfielder was famously into his seventh season as an inter-county player before he lost a championship match of any description.
When this correspondent interviewed him in late 2016, he was quick to bring up his club record with Raheny and seemed anxious to reassure the public that he did actually know how it felt to lose in a game of sport.
Fenton, who didn’t so much run as glide, was frequently described as the greatest midfielder of his generation and possibly all-time, and often seen as this era’s version of Jack O’Shea.
Both were at the cutting edge of midfield play in their day, combining the ball-winning capabilities of the classical midfielder with the mobility and scoring touch of an auxiliary centre-forward.
There were even parallels in the general shape of their career, with both arriving as part of a second wave shortly after their immediate predecessors had already sampled All-Ireland success.
Jack McCaffrey had more blinding pace, Diarmuid Connolly was considered more lavishly skillful, Stephen Cluxton was deemed more of a mould-breaker, while James McCarthy carried more of an air of a spiritual leader.
But Fenton seemed to represent the full package, a player seemingly without weaknesses.
While his career was marked by an astonishing consistency of performance, with remarkably few off-colour games (the 2019 drawn final seems to be a collector’s item in that regard) there were a few famous days which stood out.
2015 All-Ireland final – Dublin 0-12 Kerry 0-09
The 2015 All-Ireland final was a particularly charmless game of football from a neutrals’ perspective, a low-scoring, rain-soaked affair played out under dank and grey skies.
The match is best remembered now for the shemozzle on the ground between Philly McMahon and Kieran Donaghy near the end, when the latter alleged he’d been eye-gouged. There was a brief media ruckus weeks later, when the players involved were surprised to learn that their interactions with referee David Coldrick were being recorded for a behind-the-scenes documentary, which prompted the GPA to issue a rebuke.
Dublin were still considered at least somewhat fallible after being ambushed 12 months earlier though, out of sight, they’d been carefully smoothing their gameplan, ironing out some of the defensive kinks that Jim McGuinness had exploited. We were in the foothills of the most oppressive era of dominance ever witnessed in inter-county football.
And they’d unearthed a new diamond. Brian Fenton finished his first season with the Dublin seniors by picking up the man of the match award at the Gibson Hotel banquet.
Where had he come from? The Dublin minor team of 2011 – which blew the All-Ireland in agonising fashion – were considered intimidating enough to be going on with, talked about in hushed and reverential tones by all who’d tracked their rise.
And now here was a guy from slap bang in that age group who failed to even make the squad – and he’s out there dominating midfield in an All-Ireland senior final.
The Raheny-born Fenton had been a promising underage swimmer, winning titles in Ireland up to under-16 level before opting to concentrate on football. He made progress at UCD under the tutelage of the late Dave Billings and by his final year at Under-21, he’d ascended to the A-list, starting at midfield as the Dubs devoured Roscommon in the 2014 All-Ireland final.
He scored a goal on his first league start against Monaghan in Clones and in no time at all became part of the furniture. There was precious little bedding-in period where he acclimatised to senior football. Like a Flann O’Brien character, he was born at the age of 22 with a perfect knowledge of how to play midfield in the 2010s.
He wasn’t overawed in the All-Ireland final, delivering a marvellous performance in the engine room against his father’s county.
It may have been a drab and colourless finale but for the Dubs, it was among their most important of All-Irelands, not least on account of Fenton announcing himself.
2019 All-Ireland semi-final – Dublin 3-14 Mayo 1-10
The famous third-quarter blitzkrieg game. The Dublin team of the 2010s gave what history will likely recall as their signature passage of football in the opening 10-15 minutes of the second half of the 2019 semi-final against Mayo.
Coming in the wake of a sluggish first half, the blistering 12-minute spell – when they racked up 2-06 to convert a two-point deficit into an unassailable 10-point lead – gave one cause to wonder whether they were playing within themselves the rest of the time.
Casual fans in the premium who’d been late returning to their seats for the second half probably had to squint at the scoreboard a couple of times to make sure they were seeing it right.
While a rampant Con O’Callaghan slipped home both goals, Fenton was utterly mesmeric during that passage.
His piece of fielding in a congested middle third on the 41st minute was perhaps the biggest wow moment of the entire spell, almost reminiscent of the famous Sean Wight image from the ’82 minor final.
It was a reminder that while Fenton may have been the most modern of midfielders, he could still mix it in the traditional stakes.
He polished off the win himself by side-footing home the third goal after a deft little feint. Fenton, usually businesslike on the pitch, let out a roar after finding the net and there was a touch of malice in the way Dublin devoured Mayo in the second half, a team who’d proven their greatest irritant in the peak years.
2020 All-Ireland semi-final – Dublin 1-24 Cavan 0-12
Perhaps a more humdrum one for the list but a feature of Fenton’s career was that he turned up on all days – the unforgettable ones, the entirely forgettable ones.
The Covid championship, played out in front of empty stadiums in the deep mid-winter of 2020, was a strange experience for all who played in it and covered it.
The Dubs, with a masked Dessie Farrell having assumed the reins from Jim Gavin, were looking more imperious than ever and claimed one of their easiest and least memorable All-Ireland finals of the lot.
Fenton finished the year with his second Footballer of the Year award – after 2018 – pipping Ciaran Kilkenny to the prize.
Only Mayo in the final managed to keep the margin of defeat inside single digits. It was against Cavan – surprise winners of Ulster – that Fenton delivered his blockbuster performance of the shortened campaign, clipping over 0-04 from play en route to a man of the match accolade.
The air was thick with state-of-the-game recriminations after yet another handy Dublin All-Ireland and it was thought that the sun may never set on this empire.
Fenton, by now aged 27, had his fifth All-Star, his second Footballer of the Year, his sixth All-Ireland from six attempts, and had won 37 of his 40 championship matches
2023 All-Ireland semi-final – Dublin 1-17 Monaghan 0-13
The last All-Ireland for Fenton, McCarthy, Dean Rock and possibly a host of others.
The narrative mongers in the press had portrayed this as their redemption triumph. Their one-more-for-the-road All-Ireland.
The Dubs had been chastened by successive All-Ireland semi-final defeats. The chaotic 2021 All-Ireland semi-final loss to Mayo was famously Fenton’s first championship defeat in his seventh campaign.
Earlier that year, he’d been among those captured by a long lens photographer at a rule-breaking Covid training session in Innisfails.
By 2023, however, Cluxton was back, McCaffrey was back and the Dubs were hitting full throttle once again.
None more so than Fenton, by now universally acclaimed as one of the greatest footballers of all-time.
In the wake of that season’s final, there was a spirited ding-dong as to whether David Clifford or James McCarthy was more deserving of the Footballer of the Year gong.
Had Brian Fenton not already won it twice (2018, 2020), neither of them might have gotten near it.
In both semi-final and final, Fenton was a decisive figure in hauling the Dubs over the line. Arguably more so in the semi against Monaghan.
With the scores tied on 60 minutes, Fenton won a race for possession with Gary Mohan, sprang off his knees and curled a shot away from a tight angle before the block came on, the ball swinging between the posts and into Hill 16.
A few minutes later, with the game still hanging in the balance, Fenton lofted over another point from the edge of the D, despite Darren Hughes diving at his laces. With limited room to work, he had the split-second awareness to sand-wedge this one, the ball hoisted high over the posts.
He would clip over 0-02 in a stellar final display as Dublin avenged the previous year’s semi-final loss to Kerry, and the trio of McCarthy, Cluxton and Mick Fitzsimons broke new territory with a ninth senior football All-Ireland.
There was a valedictory to the post-match formalities and there was a whisper around the place that Fenton might even walk after that victory.
In the end, he stuck around for one more tilt, making it a full decade in the jersey. But now he’s gone, eschewing the usual retirement statement – Walter Walsh may have started a trend – as he leaves the scene not far removed from the peak of his powers.
