PHILLY McMahon can’t accept Brian Fenton’s decision to quit Dublin at the age of 31 is retirement. He hopes the six-time Allstar winner is merely taking a break but there was no mention of that in the statement from the Dublin County Board yesterday.
McMahon and Fenton were team-mates on six All-Ireland-winning teams between 2015 and 2020 and the popular BBC NI pundit described the departure of his former colleague well before his ‘sell-by’ date as “an alarm bell” for Dublin football.
Fenton, who won his seventh Sam Maguire in 2023, has followed James McCarthy out through the Dublin dressingroom door after a trophy-packed decade at the inter-county coalface.
“He’s still young and I don’t see this as a retirement,” said McMahon.
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“I hope it’s a break.
“I don’t know what’s going on, but for a fella of Brian Fenton’s status to leave at 31… Something’s gone wrong there for him to say: ‘I don’t want this any more’.
“People might ask: ‘Is it something in the set-up he’s not liking, or something that’s preventing him doing certain things in his life?’ Then again, maybe he’s had enough, he’s done it all... Simple as that.”
Fenton was a full-forward when McMahon first crossed paths with him at club level. McMahon, playing full-back, marked him in Ballymun versus Raheny game.
“I always say I made him into a midfielder because I skinned him that day,” joked McMahon.
What a midfielder he created. Fenton wore the number 14 jersey for most of his underage career and when he filled-out and grew to 6′6″, he retained the movement of a forward but combined it with the size and physique of a midfielder. That virtually unstoppable mix made him the most complete midfielder in the game – a player who could rules the skies, defend and get forward for vital scores.
“Brian came into the Dublin panel and his first game – and he’d be the first to admit it – he wasn’t firing on all cylinders and he struggled a little bit,” says McMahon.
“He’s a guy who wouldn’t have been a big name at a young age (he wasn’t selected for the Dublin minor teams) and he had to fight to get where he got to. The fact that he kept going and persevered is a story in itself.
“Jim (Gavin) could obviously see the potential in him and he gave him another game and he was excellent. The rest is history.
“He had the skillset and movement efficiency of a full-forward but he had the build and the size of a midfielder. He was a hybrid in that respect.
“If you ask: How do you create a Brian Fenton? Well you need to start them off as a full-forward and hope they have the genetics to become a midfielder. His mam, who sadly passed away a few years’ back, was a swimming coach.
“She would have brought him swimming a lot so he had this big wingspan the length of a room from the big swimmers’ stroke on his arms. Once he was tackling you it was hard to get around him because he was so wide.
“He is an incredible lad off the pitch as well. I would have had really good banter with him over the years – he would have slagged me and I would have slagged him.
“If he rang, you’d answer the phone and if he needed a favour you’d do it for him. He’s that type of a fella.”
At 31, he’s still in his prime and you’d guess that ‘Fento’ could potentially have at least two more years in him as a frontline county midfielder. His retirement just after McCarthy’s brings an end to one of Dublin’s best-ever centrefield partnerships.
“He’s still one of the main players,” said McMahon.
“He’s a leader in the changingroom and he became one of the main leaders after a lot of my group retired so this is an alarm bell for Dublin.
“When you lose a fella of that stature it’s usually because of one of two things. One, he’s not happy with something that’s going on in the camp, or two: He’s not happy with what he’s doing and he wants to do more in life and he’s looking at going travelling or other things.
“I don’t have the answers to what the reason is. Maybe if another couple of lads leave the squad you could make an assumption that there’s something going on there but I don’t know, I’ve been detached from that group for a while.
“For a fella like him to leave at the age of 31… It’s a strange one. Over the last few years Dublin have had players leave and come back and there’s a danger in that because then other younger lads see it and go: ‘Oh, you know what, if I don’t want to really commit this year I can come back in’. It’s very hard to contain that, you open a can of worms.
“We’ve seen that with a few players: Paul Mannion, Jack McCaffrey… Steven Cluxton left and came back too although he’s probably a little bit different. The culture is starting to change and maybe that’s down to it being too serious, too strenuous? Who knows?
“It would be hard to leave and come back as a midfielder because the game moves on but if there was a player who could take a year out and come back as good I’d say Brian Fenton would be that player.”
When you think of the great Dublin teams of recent years images of mature, battle-hardened athletes come to mind. McMahon left the stage aged 34, the same age as McCarthy. Dean Rock was 34 when he walked away, Jonny Cooper was 33... McMahon says the motto among the group he played in was “squeeze all you can out of your career”.
Of course the culture was based on winning but there was always an eye on making sure your replacement was ready to take over the jersey.
“I wanted to play every minute, every second,” says the eight-time Sam Maguire winner whose late father Phil was a native of Belfast.
“Winning was important but moreso it was how you passed the jersey on to the next person.
“You knew that was going to be important for the next player, the next generation. That’s the way I was, I didn’t want to lose a minute of playing football for Dublin and some of these lads – and I’m not saying Fenton here – don’t seem to have that same feeling.
“Then again, that can be a positive thing too because you can’t be just consumed by one thing in life, you have to be able to venture into other elements of what’s out there. People talk about the pressure of GAA nowadays and if you want to get a certain thing out of it you have to do it, if you don’t want it then other doors are open.
“The key thing with Brian is that he’s achieved everything he can. There’s nothing else there bar leaving the jersey in a better place for the next man to come in. That means that when the next man comes into midfield you’re coaching him to an extent, you’re being a mentor. That’s important.
“Winning is important but I can tell you, some of the most important parts of people’s careers were the end of them. Players like Denis Bastick, Paul Casey, Alan Brogan… stayed on to pass the jersey on to the next person knowing that you don’t just drop the jersey and it’s ‘see you later’.”
