Michael Fennelly pays tribute to retiring Tipperary rivals

Michael Fennelly has paid tribute to his recently retired Tipperary peers, after a succession of announcements saw three ‘great men’ the Kilkenny midfielder had often marked quit the inter-county scene in the space of five days.

Shane McGrath, James Woodlock and Conor O’Mahony all played a centre-field role in Tipperary’s All-Ireland semi-final defeat to Galway and would be well acquainted with their Kilkenny counterpart from their long-running and career-defining rivalry.

Fennelly and Kilkenny stood between Tipperary and All-Ireland senior glory on numerous occasions, as well as at U21 level, where Fennelly came between that trio and the Cross of Cashel in 2004 (for McGrath and O’Mahony) and 2006 (for Woodlock).

“I’d have marked the three of them at different stages, probably Shane McGrath the most and Woodlock as well,” said Fennelly. “They’re three great men and any time you were going out against the three of them, you were always a bit anxious about how it was going to go. Conor O’Mahony was one of the top centre-backs for a period during the noughties and they were great men for Tipperary.

“They got to a good few All-Irelands and we probably pipped them at the post a few times. Those games could’ve gone either way. The margins of winning can be so small and those days they were very small.

“They could’ve had three, four or five All-Irelands at this stage and we might only have two or three, so it’s small margins like that.”

Tipperary also announced the retirement of 2010 Hurler of the Year Lar Corbett last week, but Fennelly recognises that they’ll continue to contend for major honours.

“Tipp have a great underage system, they’d great U21s this year and they always have good Minor teams. Tipp have a cycle of hurlers and they’ll be coming strong again.”

Despite the retirement of his contemporaries, Fennelly is looking ahead to next season already and, after speaking about nutrition at the Setanta College coaching conference, he talked about the influence of diet in injury recovery.

“I didn’t need to adjust (after injury this summer) because my diet would have been good and I’d have good calcium levels, the berries for anti-inflammatories and protein. With the back injury, it was more of a neural thing maybe — we weren’t really too sure what it was. It was just something that I needed to take a bit of time and medication for. Thankfully it eased off and I was able to get back training again.”