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PREDICTION

Fennelly: Shefflin 'without a doubt' has a future as Kilkenny boss

Henry Shefflin enjoyed a remarkable career as a player and now he’s making waves on the sideline.

Kevin O’Brien reports from Netwatch Cullen Park

MICHAEL FENNELLY WAS in good spirits after Ballyhale Shamrocks won the ninth provincial title in their history today. 

Ballyhale Shamrocks celebrate with the cup after the game Michael Fennelly celebrate with the cup after the game. Oisin Keniry / INPHO Oisin Keniry / INPHO / INPHO

And why wouldn’t he be? After retiring from inter-county duty last December, Fennelly has lifted county and provincial titles with his club. The lesser demands of the club game have clearly helped Fennelly’s cody as he continues to manage back and Achilles issue, while he’s thrived in a new role at centre-back. 

Fennelly’s acceptance speech saw him thank the fiancee of forward Mark Aylward “for all her hard work yesterday” in giving birth to their first child. Aylward arrived off the bench late on and clipped over a score to put the icing on the cake of an unforgettable weekend for him.

Shortly after his speech, Fennelly praised Henry Shefflin’s leadership and predicted he will wind up as manager of Kilkenny at some point in the future.

“Without a doubt,” says Fennelly. “I’d say he has his eyes on that, even in the back of his mind maybe. It’s his first year and he has a Leinster final medal which is huge. I’ve no doubt he’d love to be playing out here.

“Even after the county final he looked a bit disappointed in terms of after the game, talking to a journalist. He would have loved to be playing. He’s probably not too far off it only for his knee really. But look, he’s on the sideline for us and that’s just as important. He’s a huge asset to the club.

“As a player, he brought leadership and he’s brought leadership again [as manager]. He’s passionate, he knows hurling and he knows it well. He’s a driver, he pulls us all together I think, he speaks very well. He has a genetic leadership ability. He always had that and he’s bringing that to management now. I’ve no doubt we’ll see him in a couple of years at inter-county level.

(Managing) club is a big task, especially when he only retired last year. I don’t know would I do it myself because players maybe know each other very, very well, but he took it on to be fair to him, he took a risk and here we are now. 10, 11, 12 months later and we’re Leinster champions.

“We got a good run and we’ve had little injuries, last year and the year before we’d always been riddled with injuries. We’d four or five players with injuries and now we’ve nothing. So it’s just a bit of luck at times as well and everything coming together at one time.”

Henry Shefflin Ballyhale boss Henry Shefflin. Oisin Keniry / INPHO Oisin Keniry / INPHO / INPHO

Shefflin’s first venture into management has gone down extraordinarily well as they head for a winter of planning an assault on the Tommy Moore Cup. They dismantled the 2015 All-Ireland winning side and brought through a number of talented youngsters including Brian Cody, Eoin Cody, Eoin Reid and Adrian Mullen.

They continue to extract the best out of TJ Reid and Colin Fennelly, while the deployment of Michael Fennelly at number six has been a masterstroke. Only for 10 first-half wides, Ballyhale would have been further ahead at the interval but they rectified that in the second period. 

16 points was the winning margin, following on from their 14-point win over Naomh Eanna in the semi-final. Shefflin is nearly making this management lark look easy.

“It’s not easy,” said Shefflin. “I’m learning the whole time. I’ve a great backroom team behind me. Look, we’ve a great club. We’ve 30 lads togged out today, six not allowed tog out. Five years ago we’d have had 28, 27, 26. We’ve just had the numbers.

You realise how small the population of Ballyhale is. To turn out the umber we turn out, hurling wise, is absolutely brilliant.

“We would have spoken about a bit of respect, respect in Kilkenny. We got out of Kilkenny. Kilkenny hurling had hit a bit of a wobble the last couple of years so the junior and intermediate teams winning yesterday and the senior team winning is a good bonus for the lads. Hopefully it will be a sign of things to come for next year.

Adrian Mullen celebrates scoring a goal Two goal hero Adrian Mullen. Laszlo Geczo / INPHO Laszlo Geczo / INPHO / INPHO

“I don’t think Ballyboden performed like they could. We did a lot of research. In the Dublin championship they were really motoring well. In the club championship they haven’t been flowing as much.

“When we got the early goal it set the scene. We knew if we could get the scores on the board we’d have a good chance.”

Shefflin reserved a special mention for the youngsters who’ve come into the side and moulded them into All-Ireland contenders once again.

Ye haven’t seen them but the young lads have done well for us all year. This time last year we had a massive win in the U21 championship and that has really stood to us. Evan playing beside Mick (Fennelly), if Mick is going well then Evan is going to go well.

“They are working very hard, putting in the shift and we are getting the bounce as a management team fresh in. They are probably hanging on our words a lot and that probably changes over the years, no doubt about it. Things have just worked very well for us, even in the first-half when it was tight.

“We had ten wides and we wouldn’t have been happy with that, a 41% conversion rate. We experienced that in the club championship at home where we went in at half-time not shooting the lights out. We knew there was more in us in the second-half and that stood to us.” 

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