“I’d know TJ inside out. He was just staring at me” – Fennelly on making himself big before TJ’s free

There are drawings on the wall behind him and there's a hi-vis on the chair.

Something's telling me there was a hard-hat knocking around too. Colin Fennelly is a project manager for a construction company called Virtus and on All-Ireland final week, in his office up in Dublin, the Ballyhale man looks like a busy man. But there are no complaints here. Busy is the way to be, especially with a big game on the horizon and though it's been a typically full-on winter for the Ballyhale hurler/project manager, Fennelly is happy to be tipping away in the thick of it. He's recently retired from Kilkenny and while he has no regrets or withdrawal symptoms, it's not like he's been putting the feet up anyway. "To be fair to my boss in Virtus there, they're happy for me to train, to play matches, to do interviews like this, just as long as I stay on top of my work. "Work comes first, at the end of the day. "You have to do your meetings, be onsite, and it's about not letting hurling affect that," he says just three days before Ballyhale bid to win a third successive AIB All-Ireland club hurling title. "But the joys of it... And I am enjoying it. I got the train up this morning, 6:15 to 8:00 to be up to Dublin. "You can catch up on work on that, the odd Saturday morning, do two or three hours. And you have that flexibility which is great too with our job." It's put to him that hurling with Kilkenny might have been hard to manage given the hectic schedule but he says work had nothing to do with that. He had his time. His time had come and gone. Fennelly is nothing if not honest and to the point.  "I enjoyed it, I absolutely loved playing with Kilkenny. And I'd love to be still there, but that enjoyment wasn't there. And it's there with Ballyhale. You could see from the Thomas' game and stuff, we are enjoying it. The final whistle in that Thomas' game, it meant everything to us. The excitement in people's faces, you see that we are all enjoying it." "With Kilkenny, we were at the top for long enough and that time ran out I suppose. "I think there's a lot more pressure when it comes to Kilkenny then when you're playing - you think a lot more about it - you get tired and overwhelmed from it all and certainly since I've finished, it has been a lot more relaxed and enjoyable." "But that's what comes with playing with Kilkenny. You're at the top and you're there to be dragged back down as much as possible from other teams." The same could be said for Ballyhale Shamrocks, who have been club hurling's standard-bearers this long time but for Fennelly, playing with the club is less intense, it's more enjoyable. "It's a lot more relaxed. I think with county, you're a lot more conscious. We do the same amount of training and the same amount of gym with both Ballyhale and Kilkenny but it's the things outside of it. You don't have to watch your sleep as much, you don't have to watch your diet as much and it's those small key things." It's easy to enjoy it when you're winning games, especially in the manner Ballyhale are, but with TJ Reid on your team and with the 'we won't stop' mindset this Ballyhale team clearly have, they're just as good when they're losing too. "It's not something we had planned," he says of stepping in front of St Thomas' goalie Gerald Kelly before TJ's infamous free. "I'd know TJ inside out, and he knows me inside out. We've played with each other for years. He was just staring at me before the shot. I remember just putting out my arms as wide as possible to make it as hard as possible for the defenders to see. He struck it right at us. I actually barely saw it going in, that was more because the keeper came out in front of me, I was watching him." Some call it luck, some call it typical Ballyhale but whatever it is, there's no beating the way they stare adversity down. " I think over the years, we've realised there's no giving up. I mentioned already Bennettsbridge, I think they were beating us by maybe 15, 16 points at one stage this year. I think we were unlucky to not get a goal, the last minute the ball was cleared off the line. And that was to bring it back to a draw There was only 10 minutes to go in that game, we were 15 points down. So that's just one example, that we won't ever stop no matter what the case is. If it comes in this All-Ireland final that we're down, 10 or 15 points in the last 10 minutes, we won't stop." It'll surely stand to them on Saturday. [caption id="attachment_249240" align="alignnone" width="1300"] 9 February 2022; Hurlers Stephen O’Keeffe of Ballygunner, Waterford, left, and Colin Fennelly of Ballyhale Shamrocks, pictured ahead of one of #TheToughest showdowns of the year, as the two sides go head-to-head in the AIB GAA Hurling All-Ireland Senior Club Championship Final this Saturday, February 12th at 3pm. Photo by Stephen McCarthy/Sportsfile[/caption]