Fennelly yearns for full-time hurling career

ALLIANZ HL DIV 1 SEMI-FINAL

“I think every player would love to play hurling or Gaelic football full-time but it’s just not financially viable,” said Fennelly.

“The Sky deal is a hint of international companies coming in with sponsorship. We’d all love to not have jobs and be playing the games full-time. I then think the heights of the game would increase as well.”

Will it happen?

“I don’t think it’s going to happen in the immediate future. Maybe down the line if there’s more money coming in to the GAA. Sky are an international company. Them coming into the GAA and maybe other sponsors, it could head in that direction slowly. It’s a tough one.”

The context for all of this was Michael’s own recent trip to Australia to further his fledgling career in sports science, where he spent 10 weeks up close and personal with the Sydney Swans. It left him impressed... and envious.

“Of course I was (envious), 100%. You’re there Monday to Friday training and you can do so much with your body, increase your fitness, strength. So much more you can do with training in full-time sport.

“I think lads would get stronger, fitter. Management would have so much time with players that everything would go up. Nutrition too could be looked at. Maybe 13-a-side would be a better job then. Hypothetically it’d be great to see what a player could do with his body.”

So much more that could be done also to maximise the return from players. How? Simply by playing more games, getting a better balance in the training/playing ratio.

“Obviously we train a lot for the amount of games we play. Niall Moyna [Head of Health and Human Performance in DCU and Down footballer selector] is one guy who says ‘Is this right?’ We might have only 10 games in a season between league and championship. How many times are we training? They [Swans] train Monday to Friday, five days in a row so if they have a heavy gym session on a Monday, they train the next day. But they are full-time athletes, that’s their job. They’re not sitting down all day at a computer. Tommy Walsh [former Kerry footballer] would even say he finds it great to go home, relax, go to the beach, just recover basically and get ready for the next day.”

Speaking of Walsh, this is a pivotal year for Kerry’s 2009 All-Ireland medal-winner. In the final season of his contract with the Swans, a serious hamstring injury last June has left him fighting to regain fitness and time is running out. Should he fail to make it, however, Fennelly reckons there will be no heartbreak.

“I think he’d love to come home because he does miss it and he’s been there five years. His contract is up this year and either way he’d be happy, to come home or stay there. It’s a big year but maybe it’s an uphill battle for him. When I left in mid-February he was still rehabbing that hamstring injury. He was maybe at 50-60% of full fitness so he’d a bit to go.

“I Facebooked him lately and he was saying he wasn’t too far off. He’d a massive hamstring injury. He’s after missing three months of pre-season even though he’s doing a mountain of training himself. Hopefully he might get back but they’ve 40-something on the panel so it’s an uphill battle.”

Fennelly himself faces his own injury battle, in its own way almost as severe, a second ankle injury suffered in successive years. The first was in the 2012 league final against Cork, the second in a club game against Clara last year, again in May but the other ankle.

“I just went completely over it, did a bad job. That really finished off the whole year. I came back for a bit of championship against Cork but there were so many problems. Things were only showing up a few weeks afterwards and then something else would show up so it made the whole thing more complicated.

“Hopefully I’m the right side of it. I’m still minding it, still rehabbing it. We played a club game last Sunday and I played the full 60 minutes. I’d be hoping to tog off this weekend and play some part if I’m picked.”