Ballyhale Shamrocks steam onwards, their endpoint seemingly a matter of their own choosing. That's if there is an endpoint at all. We're only six-and-a-bit seasons removed from them winning an All-Ireland with Henry Shefflin, Michael Fennelly and Cha Fitzpatrick as their beating heart, and yet they somehow look even more dominant now than they did then.
In the years since, they've unearthed two young hurlers of the year in Adrian Mullen and Eoin Cody and repurposed goalkeeper Richie Reid as a buccaneering centre-back. They still route most of their damage through TJ Reid and Colin Fennelly. All in all, it's an almost vulgar display of power for one club to be able to throw around the place.
Colin Fennelly stopped to take it all in after their 6-23 to 0-14 win over Clough-Ballacolla on Sunday. Their assault on another All-Ireland will come in the new year, by which time Shamrocks will be starting to celebrate 50 years since the foundation of the club. Not that they need anything to spur them to greater effort than they’re already putting in.
“It will be motivation, yeah,” said Fennelly. “It all comes through from who started the club and if you don’t mention the 50 years and what they have achieved and tell players ‘this is massive’ . . . you invite that pressure, you invite that opportunity. You don’t avoid it and ignore it.
‘Massive opportunity’
“It’s a massive opportunity for the club and if you win, you win and if you don’t, you look forward to next year. It’s not the be-all and end-all but you try the best with what’s in front of you. We focus on game by game and we haven’t a clue who we are playing in the All-Ireland semi-final and I don’t want to know. I want to enjoy my Christmas, so I do, relax with the family and get going again in the New Year.”
Fennelly was one of three Ballyhale players who was winning his seventh Leinster title on Sunday, with brothers TJ and Eoin Reid being the other two. He first played in the competition as a leggy 17-year-old way back in 2006, and though the years have worn and torn him, he’s still a blunderbuss of a full-forward. Clough-Ballacolla couldn’t get a handle on him on Sunday and he ended the day with 2-1 – and just a little miffed that it wasn’t 3-1.
“Yeah, it’s a killer,” he laughed when asked about his third goal chance, which shaved the left-hand post. “It was probably one of the handier ones that I had and I just took my eye slightly off the ball and it hit the end of the hurl. It was those inch-perfect balls from TJ that just make all the difference. The class that he brings to the game is just amazing and then his brother Richie at the back spraying the ball around the field, Joey Holden behind just mopping up. It was just an overall team performance.
‘Extra special’
“I’m enjoying it a lot more because you’re coming near the end of it and you want to make the most of it, and I think we are making the most of it. It’s absolutely amazing and it is extra special with the club. I said it before that when we won the four-in-a-row with the club with the old team of Henry and all those, you were winning here and there and then all of a sudden for three years you’re not winning anything. You think it’s gone.
“So the fact that we have won the last four years in a row with the club is really amazing. You don’t think about it when you’re younger, you think you’re going to win forever and think it’s great. But when you get to look back on it all it’s an amazing feeling. Just to see what the club achieved, see what my father achieved with the club, my brother, it’s just an amazing experience.”
