Four days out from the All-Ireland football champions' team holiday to Miami and the Dominican Republic and Brian Fenton is in good form. Sure why wouldn’t he be?
After successive semi-final losses in 2021 and ’22 – incredibly, his only career championship defeats - the Dubs reclaimed Sam Maguire this season. Midfielder Fenton is a shoe-in for a sixth All-Star and a contender for Footballer of the Year at Friday night’s awards ceremony at the RDS (Live on RTÉ One). The 30-year-old would be the sole three-time FOTY, second only to Kerry great Jack O’Shea, who claimed the old Texaco prize on four occasions.
"It was the best football year I've ever had, not personally, but just as a team," he tells RTÉ Sport. "The craic and proving people wrong. Doing it for Dessie [Farrell], doing it for Clucko [Stephen Cluxton] coming back, Maccer [James McCarthy].
"To see James lift the cup... There's a slow-mo RTÉ showed of him lifting the cup, and it just gives you a buzz. He's just this Titan warrior that's pulling us all along with him. I will always say, 'Wasn't I lucky to play with James McCarthy or play with Stephen Cluxton, Diarmuid Connolly,' because they're just Dublin legends. Dublin legends."
"I'm as motivated as ever. Luckily enough, we've tasted success in the past. We've tasted backing it up and backing it up again. Hopefully, the young lads in our team will have felt that as well and want more of it, know that feeling. I have to go again and be the best. I don't want to go out in a game and Brendan Rogers be smoking me again like he did this year. I just want to be one of Dublin's main players, one of Dublin's best players. If I'm not in the team, I want to be helping the team. I'm still a kid who wants to play with Dublin and wants to win.
"Like Kerry last year, no team wants to win it [just] twice. They want to set a legacy and prove that we're the greatest of an era. We'll be no different; we'll be hoping to back it up next year wearing this lovely new blue jersey."
The jersey in question features Dublin GAA’s new sponsors, aparthotel chain Staycity. When the Dubs were racking up six in a row between and 2015 and 2020 there was plenty of debate over whether their ability to draw in more commercial revenue than any other county was making the football championship a foregone conclusion. That subsided when Tyrone and then Kerry assumed the crown but Fenton believes that income has more effect on the clubs than the senior county team.
"When you're at the top, like anyone in sport, you're the focus of people's attention," he says. "They'll pick anything to deflect from your achievements - that's how I would feel about it.
"There's no doubt that the last decade has been incredible for Dublin GAA as a whole. We're so well looked after in terms of our food after training, if you're injured. That's no dissimilar to every other county in the country, across all codes. That's what I see. It's improving massively.
"We had a fundraising lunch for our team holiday last week and Stephen kind of spoke about the money and the growth of Gaelic Games across Dublin and that's where I would see it. I absolutely acknowledge the benefit behind the scenes for young players, for Games Promotion Officers in clubs, for facilities in clubs in Dublin. Undoubtedly, that's been a massive benefit. We get less exposure to it, I think, as a senior team, but obviously we're the figurehead of it so I can see why it comes as well.
"You're more than welcome to come up to Innisfails [North Dublin GAA club where the footballers train] any time, it's far from glamorous, it's far from a Centre of Excellence."
Fenton can laugh off "load of waffle" social-media rumours that Dublin players get delivered lunches or match-day expenses for partners as the inevitable consequence of success but bridles at the notion that their silverware is anything other than hard-earned.
"There's rumours, and when you're at the top and you're a figurehead of something… I don't care about it. But when people are like, 'Ah youse won cos of the money,' I'd say, 'Right well you didn't see me slogging it at Innisfails or in the gym, the mundane stuff away from the lights that got me to this place as well.' Try and balance it up a little bit.
"We're incredibly well supported but money and finances... money isn't going to push me up and down the pitch in a Bronco [aerobic fitness] test when I'm trying to beat James McCarthy across the line. Money isn't going to get me going when we're going up to Derry or Omagh. It's something intrinsic as well that has driven our success."
July’s triumph over the Kingdom meant McCarthy, Cluxton and Mick Fitzsimons became the first men to win nine All-Ireland SFC titles. In the aftermath, McCarthy, and eight-time winner Dean Rock, hinted at retirement while Cluxton characteristically said nothing at all. Will they be back with their team-mates for pre-season training next month?
"The emotion gets to their heads!" jokes Fenton of the post-final reflection. ""You're scared to ask. You're not going to go, 'Maccer, here are you retiring, what's the story?'
"No official line, no official word. You don't see players. [Paul] Mannion won't be back until Crokes are finished. You just see what happens and hope for the best. Whoever comes back, so be it. There's a really impressive crop of 20, 21, 22-year-olds there now, and hopefully [they have] tasted it, sense it, feel it. If we can cling on and add a little bit to it at my age, then so be it."
You certainly shouldn’t expect any social media announcements from Cluxton (42), who made a sensational return to the panel this March after two and a half years away. But Fenton enjoys reminding his now reticent team-mate of the 2006 documentary 'The Dubs: The Story of a Season’ when he was considerably more chatty.
"Stephen won't talk to any of us for six months, and he'll be back on a Tuesday night.
"I always slag him because he'd be slagging us about doing jersey launches. I'd be like, 'Hang on a second, you set the precedent for this'. That was him in a previous life.
"It's still on the RTÉ Player [here]. Stephen was holding court doing interviews."
"He's like a second father to me. I would literally run through a wall for him."
One man who will definitely be back is manager Dessie Farrell, whose term was recently extended until the end of the 2025 campaign.
"For him to stay on is amazing," says Fenton. I only know Dessie, Jim [Gavin].
"He's like a second father to me. I would literally run through a wall for him.
"The easy opportunity for him, I'm sure, would be to say ‘All-Ireland winning manager, twice, see you later'. For him to give us another go only builds our confidence. We'll give it another crack with the same management."
The aforementioned Mannion and his Kilmacud Crokes colleagues are aiming to retain the All-Ireland club title they won in mildly controversial circumstances this year.
They beat Ballyboden St Enda’s in the Dublin decider by eight points but only denied Fenton and Raheny, what would have been a first county final appearance in 53 years in a penalty shootout.
"It’s a sense of what could have been," he admits. "Would you have beaten Boden in the county final? Who knows. I probably would have backed them to win the final before the game.
"Myself, Brian Howard and Sean McMahon have been with Dublin a long time now and people have said to us ‘How come ye aren’t achieving more’ so it was nice to bring it on this year. We got a great bounce off [Mayo goalkeeper] Rob Hennelly joining our team. Rob was brilliant behind the scenes, adding in things we had never done on a club scene like prepping kickouts. He was a consistent free-taker we had never had. We got a huge bounce off it.
"It builds the eagerness and momentum for next year in the club so lots to live up to. It gives us the sense now that we’re close-ish. If we improve next year we could have a crack at it so it could be a long year again hopefully."
Nine and out of ten penalties were scored in the semi-final but Fenton was not among the takers: "I couldn’t kick snow off a rope that day. I had been missing all day, I don’t think I scored and had missed a really easy chance from the 20-metre line. You look back and think ‘Should I have?’ but only one lad missed and it went over the bar. I would have played a lot soccer underage and any peno I ever took seemed to miss so I’ll leave that to the forwards. Might take one next year."
Despite the heartache, he believes a shootout (only introduced to Gaelic games in 2020) as exciting and fair a way to decide a winner as any.
"I enjoyed it. I know there’s a debate, is it fair to end a game like that, but it was a buzz, standing in the huddle, or watching on TV. I had never been a part of anything like it.
"As tough as it was to lose, it’s fair, it’s equal for everyone. If I lost more of them maybe I’d be saying ‘Change this’ but then you’re wondering would Crokes have beaten us better on the day in a replay? The underdog-favourite debate.
"When Derry beat Armagh in Ulster on penalties people were saying ‘Could they not get another day out of it?’ and I understand that argument but I think it’s part of sport. You win or you lose and once it’s fair for everyone whatever will be will be."
Watch the PwC All-Star Awards on Friday from 7.30pm on RTÉ One and RTÉ Player
Watch the Connacht Club semi-final, Corofin (Galway) v Ballina Stephenites (Mayo), on Saturday from 1.30pm on RTÉ One and RTÉ Player
