At the final whistle, Brian Fenton let himself go. Control went. Discarded. Worthless now. He didn’t care what he looked like or who was watching. He made a run and jump, legs flying, arms flailing, nothing in sync, his whole body roaring. Possessed by the feeling, as if nothing like this had happened before. Won everything. Did everything. Won it again. Did it again.
Deadly.
It wasn’t a momentary thing. For the next 20 minutes Fenton led the celebrations, just as he had dominated the match. Every hug he made was like a scene from Arrivals on Christmas Eve. He climbed the steps behind his close friend Ciaran Kilkenny, and when Kilkenny lifted the cup with a couple of kids, Fenton called him back and insisted that he lift it on his own. Kilkenny was confused for a second and did what he was told.
Then Fenton grabbed the Sam Maguire and shook it above his head, once, twice, like it was the first time, the last time, the only time.
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When the presentation finished Thin Lizzy came booming over the public address and Fenton starting dancing, his two arms moving in rhythm above his head, his hips swaying, like he was the father of the bride, with his tie hanging loose and his jacket slung against a chair somewhere. Not a care.
How did this feel different? In his first six years as a Dublin player Fenton didn’t lose a championship match. During Dublin’s six-in-a-row he didn’t miss in minute of play. In his first final against Kerry in 2015 he was man of the match. His brilliance was an article of faith. Everyone knew that it couldn’t be as simple as it looked, but he made the illusion seductive.
The glory run ended and for a couple of years Dublin drifted, still winning games that they couldn’t lose, but no longer the fiercest beast in the jungle. Fenton’s levels dropped; just a little. Enough to make a difference. In the All-Ireland semi-final last year Jack Barry, Kerry’s killjoy, put Fenton in a harness again. In seven league and championship matches Barry had restricted him to two points and dimmed his light. Dublin needed him to change the narrative. He couldn’t.
On Sunday, Fenton destroyed Kerry. For some reason they elected not to tag him with Barry, and, untethered, he bestrode the match. Either way, it probably didn’t matter. Nobody would have held him. By the end Fenton had made a staggering 31 plays. When the game was on a knife edge, in the middle of the second half, he made the score that drew Dublin level and kicked the score that put them ahead.
For both of them he charged down the middle of the pitch, like he was a minor playing in an U-14 match. For the first, he won a throw ball on the Dublin 21 and took off. Gave a pass, took a pass; Paul Mannion kicked the point. All square. Then, after eight scoreless minutes, Fenton broke the deadlock. When he was finished running he kicked a sweet point from around the D, his second of the match. He grabbed the game when it was there for anybody.
James McCarthy was his partner again, for the eighth time this season, more than they had ever played together in a championship campaign. When Dublin were in their pomp, Fenton and McCarthy went on an extraordinary run of not losing a game when they were paired together – 20 wins in a row. Two years ago, Mayo brought that sequence to a halt.
McCarthy did bits and pieces on Sunday, but he was caught for turnovers too, and on another day he might have been shown two yellow cards, or a straight red. Dessie Farrell said during the week that McCarthy was probably the greatest Dublin player of all time, but he didn’t need to be that player yesterday; Fenton had spare capacity. Dublin revolved around him.
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When he was named Footballer of the Year for the second time in 2021, Fenton received a text from a number he didn’t recognise. Jack O’Shea had taken the trouble to get in touch. Whatever else he saw he would have seen an image of himself. The game changes so much that comparisons across the generations are treacherous, but O’Shea invented modern centrefield play, and Fenton is his direct descendant.
They had it every way: the endless capacity to get up and down the field, the fundamental capacity to get their hands on the ball, the priceless capacity to kick scores, the essential capacity to lead. There were times on Sunday when Fenton drifted back into the Dublin D, like a captain on the quarterdeck, a fixed point of steadiness in the bedlam.
By the time Dublin finished the lap of honour, Fenton had cramps in the top of his left leg. Behind him, McCarthy, Mick Fitzsimons and Stephen Cluxton were posing for pictures, the only three players in the history of Gaelic football to win nine All-Irelands. In the most-decorated generation of footballers in Dublin’s history, they were first among equals.
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McCarthy was the last man down the tunnel, nearly an hour after the final whistle. Maybe for the last time. In the press conference afterwards he hinted that it could be the end. All season, that had been the assumption. Getting McCarthy up the steps of the Hogan Stand had been their binding mission.
Who knows what happens next? Fitzsimmons spread himself like a fire blanket over David Clifford, and didn’t look for a second like he was 35. And Cluxton? No point in asking. He was the only Dublin player who didn’t climb the steps of the Hogan to lift the cup. After he kicked the winning point in the 2011 final against Kerry, Cluxton disappeared down the tunnel while the place went berserk. He never had any truck with the paraphernalia of glory. Winning was the sum of it.
They remembered that yesterday. Like it was the first time.
