There’s no looking back for Michael Fennelly.
For 12 years, he soldiered in the famous black and amber strip and he won almost every battle he faced.
For the last seven of those years, with his real injury troubles beginning in 2011, the Ballyhale Shamrocks man went into those battles wounded. Wounded, but always fighting. Wounded and never accepting reality.
Fennelly will never go to war with Kilkenny again. He hung up his hurl two weeks ago. After he had realised and faced up to the fact that there comes a time when you just have to accept reality.
“It was just a horrendous few weeks in terms of the club – no enjoyment, this is not hurling, I shouldn’t even be doing this the way I was feeling,” he told us at the Peptalk All-Ireland Games Initiative Launch.
Reality, for him, is that he has squeezed everything he could for as long as possible out of his injury-ravaged, battle-worn body. He’d love to play for another 12 years, but his body won’t let him and he’s listening to his body.
When speaking at the O’Callaghan Mont Clare Hotel in Merrion Square, it’s clear that this 32-year-old is at ease with the decision he has made.
There is no sense of unfinished business. Eight All-Irelands, nine Leinster Championships, five leagues, three All-Stars and one Hurler of the Year later, why would there be?
He can have no regrets. Clearly he’ll miss it all, the buzz, the adrenaline and the competition, but he knows he’s had it good.
He’s walking away wounded, but it’s all relative and he has no really serious life-debilitating injury going forward. It was the right time to go.
“Look, it was a tough decision but I’m happy with it,” he says.
“To go back to Kilkenny and that intensity and that training, I just know I’m going to break down again and end up maybe with a serious injury.”
His body wasn’t able for it anymore. This is a man who routinely had to sit out training so he wouldn’t be as sore on the day of a game. A man who was dogged for years, but pushed his body and mind to the limit so he could be play in these big games. Obviously, only his extraordinary talent and ability let him prepare for games in such a manner, and still routinely be the most influential player on the pitch.
His was an injury hell. You name it, he’d come through it from back injuries to knee problems to broken bones to his achilles heel.
He was so used to overcoming that pain barrier, that he’d planned to do it all again when the Kilkenny panel reconvened in November.
“I did commit to 2018 back in November with the team,” Fennelly said.
“It was very close to the semi-final when we lost with the club. I hadn’t really much time to think about it but I still obviously wanted to go back as well and that was in my head. I was just back doing the weights and stuff, they were going well. But then the last week or so of November, my back kind of started kicking off again.
“Then I had my wedding to organise and obviously to go to! We’d a honeymoon. I suppose on the honeymoon we’d time to actually get away from everything. I’d a good think about it what was ahead.”
Logic intervened. He made the right decision.
“I always said I don’t want to finish my career on an injury. Even though I know there’s accumulation of injuries here now and probably my big decision is because of my body but at least I’m not in a cast or I’m not in a nine month kind of rehab phase. So I’m happy in terms of that,” he said.
“Obviously it’s disappointing to leave that environment, that culture and even being back in November in Nowlan Park I felt great to be back in there. I felt with the players and even competing with yourself, competing with the other players, Brian in there and Mick Dempsey, it feels good. It actually is.
“I suppose I got away from that for December and had a think about it myself. I was actually in bed thinking about it one night, thinking about the bits and pieces and thinking it’s actually time to go. I’d my mind made up at that stage. I did take a few days just to see would I change my mind or anything like that. But no I was happy enough. I think it’s the right decision,” added the powerhouse midfielder.”
He still has club hurling with Ballyhale Shamrocks to keep him occupied. He’s looking forward to that, and he’s looking forward to seeing the young players in Kilkenny’s transitioning panel making their mark.
He left a message for them when he left. A message inspired by the difficulties he encountered in his early days in the cauldron of those Nowlan Park training sessions.
“I would have actually sent a message when I finished up in the (WhatsApp) group there with that exact message – saying basically I made a mistake when I first came in or I was a bit naive in terms of how I came in,” he said.
He urged them to grab that initiative and bury it home. There’s no time like the present. The present will be the rest of the Walsh Cup and the early rounds of the National League.
They have what it takes https://t.co/dVjKxRCH9a
— GAA JOE (@GAA__JOE) January 4, 2018
“I told them to just jump straight in there and don’t be holding back for a year or two or three years thinking you’ll get your place then at that time. I finished on that message, funnily enough.
“I was nearly kind of waiting for it. I waited and then Michael Rice came out midfield and then Cha came out midfield as well and I was like, ‘Oh my God, this is a nightmare’.
“You hear a lot of talk with the word potential. Potential is a good thing in one sense, but in another sense you haven’t achieved anything yet really. That’s another way of looking at it, so you have to be careful on that.”
“You’re thinking, great, people are saying this, that this will happen for me. And you’re probably waiting for it to happen instead of actually making it happen. That’s something too psychologically that I would be very conscious of with younger players.”
Crucially, he does feel the potential is in the county.
“The potential is there, they just have to make it work. Again, there’s no All-Stars as such that we would have seen before like Richie Hogan who would have been spotted when he was younger. Richie Power would have been spotted. Tommy Walsh would have been spotted.
“There’s probably no stand-out players like that, but, again, you don’t need that once you have a good bunch of players with good commitment, good values, and they’re looking to push themselves and improve and develop, you never know where you’ll end up if you have that. “
He feels the more experienced players will have a crucial role to play in their development based on his experience.
“Without a doubt. That’s what we were given. That’ll be passed on to them (From the likes of TJ and Richie) Eddie Brennan gave me good advice, Mick Kavanagh, Derek Lyng and these lads all passed on what they had learned to us, so even though we’re all competing for the same position, everybody knows to share the knowledge and their experiences, because it’s for the good of the team,” he said.
As many intercounty hurlers say, you never own the jersey. You have a job and a responsibility to pass it onto the next generation, to hand it over in a better condition than when you inherited it.
Michael Fennelly certainly did that.
Michael Fennelly was at the launch of Peptalk’s All Ireland Games, an intercompany wellbeing challenge that allows companies all over Ireland to compete against each other. To get your company signed up check out http://www.peptalk.ie/all-ireland-games.
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