David Gough blew for a hop ball in the first half 20 yards from Dublin’s goal.
Big Kieran Donaghy stood planted waiting for it and his mere gigantic presence was almost a goading symbol in itself to the capital: come and have a go if you think you’re hard enough.
Brian Fenton came charging back and pushed his way through the sky blue jerseys manning the vicinity of Star like a squad of overawed policemen watching on helplessly at some Big Foot character after their bullets were rendered useless.
But Fenton took up position next to the monster and he licked his lips. The referee threw the ball into the air, the two bodies clashed and, suddenly, the beast was on his arse and Dublin had possession.
Fenton didn’t even win the ball, he didn’t have to. He just had to stop the enemy getting their hands on it and he just had to move the immovable right out of the way and lift the siege.
It wasn’t important in the grand scheme of things but it was a sign of the rock-like resilience that is the Dubs. It was a sign of their strength and spirit. And it was an indication that maybe, just maybe, there really wasn’t anything Brian Fenton couldn’t do.
His introduction into Jim Gavin’s engine room has changed everything. Take, for example, the difference between 2014 and 2016 when Dublin faced off with Donegal. Whereas Ryan McHugh was running around the shameful spaces left for him two years previous and he was doing it with a smile on his face, he couldn’t get an inch to himself a few weeks ago. Not without Brian Fenton hounding him anyway.
Whenever Donegal tried to break, it was the Raheny man checking him every single time. Whenever someone else went further than McHugh who gradually just started to give up trying to get through, it was Fenton relentlessly coming back up their backsides like a T-1000 terminator that just couldn’t be killed off.
He gives Dublin that reinforced spine because he’s quick and powerful and dogged enough to do it. Because he just won’t go away.
Not one of his photos on Inpho’s photography website from the Kerry semi-final pictured the midfielder on the ball. He was hounding, and harrying, and hanging off men in every one of them. Even when David Moran plucked ball from the sky, he was only coming down to bloody confrontation and you could see it at times when Kerry were under the cosh, the effect that Fenton’s tireless athleticism was having on them and what James McCarthy’s hits were doing to their bodies and how Johnny Cooper’s ceaseless energy wore them down. The Kingdom began to check their runs and second guess where the next explosive hit was coming from. They began to hesitate.
Eventually, it probably made the difference as Dublin took control of the last 10 minutes and edged out the old enemy through nothing else but better health. Martin Carney described the game as gladiatorial and he was bang on the money because what it simply boiled down to was the fundamental fact that Dublin absorbed less punishment than Kerry and Dublin dished out more punishment than Kerry.
And for every Brian Fenton tackle, every shoulder, every run that he tracked, there was a bursting surge forward from the number eight. There was a trail being blazed right through the middle of Croke Park, Kerry backs scrambling and, bit by bit, more and more Dublin forwards getting free because of the continuous man over that their midfielder was offering.
When he gets a sniff of leather in his hands, he takes off; instantly, powerfully, directly. It speeds up everything Dublin does and it’s one of the main reasons why a mass defence doesn’t bother them anymore because Fenton is in behind them before they even have a chance to set up.
He’s a platform for Cluxton, an outlet for his defenders and he’s one of the most crucial attackers in one of this game’s best ever attacks. His equalising score during the second half on Sunday was only a cherry atop a dangerously sweet cake of delicious football.
He’s not there for scores, he’s there to supplement them and he does that by creating chaos. Spreading fear. He does it by going for the jugular and carrying the Dubs as far as he can until opposition teams have no other option but to draw an extra man towards him. He’s there to back up the defence and he does it all while ticking his midfield boxes too.
His pace and fitness, his end-to-end runs and just about every single skill you could wish a footballer to have have reinvented the modern day midfielder. Eamonn Fitzmaurice couldn’t have gotten Kieran Donaghy and Bryan Sheehan out of the way quick enough for this game but, even at that, Kerry still couldn’t limit Fenton’s effect.
Bernard Brogan was kept on the periphery in the semi-final, Diarmuid Connolly has been rattled in the past and just about every single footballer has shown that he can be marked on any given day.
Not Brian Fenton.
Brian Fenton is asking all the questions right now and no-one, as of yet, is coming close to finding one answer.
And until they do, that supply line and that reinforced pillar won’t be effected. Until they do, Dublin simply won’t be stopped.
