Shane Enright ready to be a 'main man' for Kerry

Shane Enright is happy to forgo his birthday celebrations this Sunday. Being able to count himself as one of the leaders of Éamonn Fitzmaurice’s side is satisfaction enough.

The Kerry defender started all nine of Kerry’s league games and, barring a surprise reshuffling of the pack by Fitzmaurice, Enright will take up arms in the Kerry full-back line on the afternoon he turns 28.

He sees himself as more than a first-team regular at this stage. To borrow his own words, he’s one of the “main men” in this Kerry set-up. He doesn’t throw out such an assertion lightly, nor does his tone suggest he’s developed an arrogant streak off the back of his first All Star award picked up last winter.

2015 was good to Shane Enright. Or as he’d put it himself, Shane Enright made sure 2015 was good to him. Having been selected for all five of Kerry’s championship games leading up to, and including, the All-Ireland semi-final replay the summer previous, the ball simply didn’t bounce for the Tarbert native that Saturday evening in Limerick. Killian Young had been drafted in at Marc Ó Sé’s expense and so each of the starting defensive sextet were acutely aware even the slightest of wobbles would see Ó Sé introduced.

Outmuscled by Cillian O’Connor when contesting an Aidan O’Shea delivery early on, Enright dragged O’Connor to the ground and the Mayo forward converted the resulting penalty. Enright was replaced by Ó Sé after 22 minutes and wasn’t selected for the All-Ireland final, although he did see the last 15 minutes of action.

Still, being dropped for the decider left him chasing personal redemption last year. “There was big pressure on me, pressure I put on myself, to come back and play well the following year and thankfully I did that. Nailing down a place on the starting 15 was the big thing and then to perform well after that. It builds your confidence too to know you can perform on the biggest days and against the biggest players and that’s where you want to be.

“I’m 28 now on Sunday and you’re one of the elder statesmen of the team nearly, one of the leaders and when you see these 19, 20, 21-year-olds coming on, you realise you’re getting old. They kind of look up to us given we’ve been there the last couple of years, so there’s pressure on you to perform at the back and be one of the main men.”

Brian Ó Beaglaoich, Barry O’Sullivan, Tom Sullivan, Mark O’Connor, Killian Spillane, Jason Foley, Micheál Burns, Gavin White and Andrew Barry are among the raft of U21s who have been training with the panel since the conclusion of the league and Enright is optimistic one of those youngsters can play a part this summer.

Clare represent Kerry’s short-term focus, but there can be no getting away from the fact, even if they deny it, there is one eye on Dublin and a potential All-Ireland semi-final meeting. “It’s not nice losing to the same team three times, but that’s down the line.”

But does it dent confidence to see a gap opening up between themselves and Jim Gavin’s men?

“I don’t think so. We’ve beaten most other teams and we know we can. It’s just getting it right on the day against the Dubs. We were well in it for 55/60 minutes [of the league final]. The sending-off didn’t help. I’m not saying we would have won the game, but look we’ve freshened things up.

“There’s a lot of young fellas coming in and if we do meet them again hopefully some of these can play a part and come on and finish the game strong.”

He added: “We know we didn’t perform last September, especially up front. We conceded 12 points. If you went into the game thinking you’d concede 12 points, you’d think you’d win, but I suppose just to find a few more goals is something we have to work on, especially against the likes of the Dubs or Tyrone who have got good defences. It’s about trying to open up that defence.”

Getting a crack at said rearguard begins on Sunday and ensuring his 28th birthday isn’t one he remembers for all the wrong reasons.