John Fenton: ‘If you play ground ball in hard and fast, I’m certain it can beat the extra man’

John Fenton of Cork fires a free against Galway in the 1986 All-Ireland in 1986. Picture: INPHO/Billy Stickland

“John, there will be a bit of glass for that one”

It's a score that wouldn’t dare be attempted now. Not because it was a strike of such majesty but because it wouldn’t be anything close to the percentage play.

When traditionalists bemoan the passing of ground hurling, it’s to goals like John Fenton’s wonder hit against Limerick in the 1987 Munster semi-final replay in Semple Stadium that they hark back to. A day incidentally ensured by current manager Kieran Kingston’s equalising point two weeks previously on a day when he also bagged a couple of goals.

Later celebrated in the Cepravin Dry Cow protection TV ad and deigned the fourth greatest GAA moment in RTÉ’s 2005 poll, Fenton had four years earlier been involved in delivering the fizzing ball into Jimmy Barry-Murphy for his outstanding double in the All-Ireland semi-final win over Galway in Croke Park.

But his own effort was on a par with that goal, both happening so quickly that the cameras struggled to capture them. Close to half-time, Dave Punch had just scored a point for Limerick when Ger Cunningham’s puck-out was touched on, Tomás Mulcahy beat Leonard Enright to break the ball into Fenton’s path and after one push forward into space the Midleton man produced one of the purest strikes ever recorded on camera. From over 40 yards, the bolt was too good for goalkeeper Tommy Quaid.

“I’m never sick of it,” smiles Fenton when asked if he gets tired of talking about the goal. “If you did something stupid or wrong then you’d be sick of it. It’s a pleasant memory. That was our style at the time, hit the ball on the ground. That’s what we were coached. Our full-forward line, one of the greatest full-forward lines, Ray Cummins, Charlie McCarthy, Seánie O’Leary, Kevin Hennessy and these guys, they wanted fast ball in.

“Christy Ring said one time if you practice something 100 times in training and it comes off once in a match it’s worth it and that was my philosophy too. That’s the way hurling was played, how we were brought up. We’d go down training with the likes of Johnny Clifford, Justin McCarthy, or Canon Michael O’Brien and the first thing there would be 20 balls thrown out on the ground and we’d be told not one of them was to stop moving for the next 20 minutes. Every training session, that’s how it started. Whatever way the ball, you just hit it to keep it going. I couldn’t count the number of times I hit the ball like that but not with the same result.

“It happened just before half-time, close to the last puck before half-time. I remember walking towards the dressing room and Dr Con (Murphy) coming up to me saying: ‘John, there will be a bit of glass going with that one’. I just caught it on the hop.”

Fenton doesn’t confirm them but there are stories of how he did something similar in training in Páirc Uí Chaoimh and Denis Coughlan batted the ball down to him only on this occasion he struck it over the bar from 70 yards out. There were more witnesses when he was inches away from repeating the feat in a Railway Cup game in Ennis a couple of months later.

There will be hurleys as short as 31 inches used in Croke Park on Sunday but Fenton’s were always 36 inches. “Justin McCarthy was making them at the time and I also used to get them from Christy Ring’s great friends, Micky McCarthy in Glanmire. He came from Carrigtwohill, my father Dan came from Carrigtwohill and they were great friends. I often had the greatest pleasure of waking up and going down the stairs and there was a hurley or two at the end of them.

“Unbeknownst to myself, he’d have gone and got them off Micky. My father hurled with Willie John Daly and Mattie Fuohy and all them guys on the great Carrigtwohill team of the 1950s.”

Fenton readily admits he is a traditionalist but he maintains there remains a role in ground hurling in the modern game as much as it is only seen now in finishing goals like Shane Kingston’s against Dublin in the All-Ireland quarter-final.

“To me, it is the antidote to the sweeper system. If you play ground ball in hard and fast, I’m certain it can beat the extra man. I’m surprised it has gone and you find now that people comment a lot when the ball is struck on the ground because it happens so rarely. But it’s the possession game now. I heard recently about a young fella who pulled on the ground and was taken off by the coach because he lost possession. That to me is absolutely ridiculous.”

The same would be said of Fenton’s goal now, only that it was ridiculously good.