THEY WERE ON different sides of the globe on 2022 All-Ireland final day, TJ Reid and Colin Fennelly.
TJ, marching around Croke Park behind the Artane Band, stripey socks high to the knee, hurley in hand, ready for battle. And Colin, marching into a San Francisco pub, Kilkenny jersey and cargo shorts, drink in hand, ready to roar his former teammates on.
Five months later, they’re back together for another All-Ireland final day at GAA HQ. The call of Ballyhale too close to home to avoid. The pull of family and tradition and history too hard to ignore. It’s already jointly theirs but win against Dunloy on Sunday and they’ll be among those to take their All-Ireland club title record to six medals each.
That’s more than any other club has collected and would be double what their former comrade and leader Henry Shefflin hauled in across his decorated playing career. Add in their title tallies of eight in Leinster and 11 in Kilkenny. Where King Henry once conquered, Reid and Fennelly have consolidated that territory, bridging across the generations to ensure Shamrocks’ status as the pre-eminent hurling club in Ireland.
Perhaps that is their greatest role in all of this. Carrying the standards of Shefflin and Michael Fennelly and James ‘Cha’ Fitzpatrick and making them the standards for Adrian Mullen and Eoin Cody and Darragh Corcoran to match.
“100%, having lads like that around the club, you’re going to try to aspire to be like them,” Mullen told The42 last week.
“Being cousins with Colin, he was definitely someone I looked up to. As a hurler, then, you’re obviously looking up to TJ Reid because he’s so good at what he does.
“They were a huge help to me when I first started breaking into the team. On and off the field. Not only to me but to any of the younger lads. That just speaks volumes about them as people. They’re all good lads.
“To have them around the place when you’re younger was a huge benefit. You see them doing things in training, it’s your instinct to try and do it as well.”
It has echoes of TJ speaking about Henry all those years before: “We always stay behind in training. I remember when I was a young lad, I used to puck back the balls to Henry when he was taking the frees.”
When Ballyhale won the first of their five-in-a-row of county titles in 2018, Reid remarked, “You grow up fast when you win a county final.” By that metric, he came of age 10 days short of his 19th birthday.
He had made his Ballyhale senior debut at 16, though, as a goalkeeper in a drawn county quarter-final. He was credited with a “strong” performance even if he hadn’t quite made a name for himself yet, mistakenly identified as PJ Reid in the replay report.
By St Patrick’s Day 2007, Reid was top-scorer with 2-2 in his first All-Ireland club victory; the three Reid brothers combining for 3-7 of Shamrocks’ 3-12. Colin Fennelly was on the bench that day, having featured briefly during the Leinster campaign.
Over the years, they have assembled some incredible totals. TJ is credited with 33-552 (651 points) in 96 games over 19 years, an average just short of seven points a game. Colin is down for 38-115 (229 points) in 90 games over 17 years, not far off a goal every two games. 25 of his goals have come in the last five years, including a 2-4 haul in the 2019 All-Ireland final, which followed hot on the heels of 4-4 tattooed into Naomh Éanna three games previous. Big-game players are these two.
Eight more points on Sunday would make TJ the championship top-scorer for the third campaign in a row. Whoever finishes with the higher tally between Fennelly and Eoin Cody, unless they are held scoreless, will be crowned the top-scorer from open play.
Their scoring this campaign (2-51 for TJ, 4-16 for Colin – including Kilkenny SHC games) is increasingly supplemented by Cody (4-33) and Mullen (2-23), highlighting the evolution of this Ballyhale brigade.
But still, those age-old warriors offer the spark. In their All-Ireland semi-final against Ballygunner, Reid had his first involvement (shouldering his way into a ruck) after three seconds, his first point after 41 seconds, and Fennelly pounced on an error to win another free after 65 seconds for Reid to convert. Not a bad first minute or so to make a statement.
After their first puck-out went straight out of play, Dean Mason sought out Reid with their second. He won a ball he had no right to win in the air, almost turning his back to the sliotar in reaching with his hurley to flick it back into his hand, and turning straight for goal to win another tap-over free.
When the game was there to be won, Reid twice won possession and fed Fennelly. Once, he was fouled just outside the 21. Point. The second time, the foul was adjudged to have occurred just inside the 14. Penalty.
Minutes later, it was Fennelly, taking his second possession of the move and beating two men with his power and turn of pace, who fed Reid who skinned the final defender before being clipped. Second penalty.
If, by Reid’s own admission, his contact wasn’t 100% crisp for the first penalty, it still would have beaten most goalies bar an inspired Stephen O’Keeffe. He gave the in-form keeper little chance with the lower, deadlier second attempt.
From his other placed balls, he delivered his trademark perfection (eight from eight) and in the dying moments, it was his unrelenting industry that stood out; snagging another puck-out and robbing Harry Ruddle to cut short a Ballygunner attack on the hour mark.
He greeted the final whistle by buck-lepping around his own ’21, celebrating as if they were into their first All-Ireland final rather than a seventh in 16 seasons.
Perhaps the greatest mark of his consistency for club and county is his nine consecutive All-Star nominations in the last nine years. Four of those years have also seen him nominated for Hurler of the Year, winning once. Last year, the gym owner became the oldest outfield All-Star since Joe Dooley in 1998. Plus there’s a three-in-a-row of appearances on the Club Team of the Year that’s sure to be extended to four this spring.
Meanwhile, Jackie Tyrrell and Anthony Nash are just two who have urged new Kilkenny manager Derek Lyng to make contact with Fennelly about revisiting his inter-county retirement decision. He took 2021 off to recharge his batteries but confirmed his departure that November.
If Fennelly’s claims of disrespect shown by Ballygunner captain Barry Coughlan were fuel for their revenge mission, they also showed the burning desire that lies under the surface. While in America with Joey Holden, it was Fennelly who kept needling the full-back about coming back with stories of unfinished business.
“Colin was out there with me and Colin was mad to get back,” Holden told The42 last month. “He was keeping his fitness going and I wasn’t but ultimately, we made the decision to come back to see if we could get the five-in-a-row for the Shamrocks in our 50th year.
“He was very driven in that regard. He probably knew my fitness would pick up quick enough because we were training over there anyway. He was just so driven to get that five in a row and keep pushing on. That ultimately had an effect on me at some stage.”
With two years in hand on the evergreen Reid, there’s no reason he couldn’t make an impact and he certainly shows no signs of losing the physical nor hurling attributes that made him such a fearsome spearhead of Kilkenny’s attack.
But travel remains high on the agenda.
“Walking off the field there in February [2022], I didn’t think I’d be playing again, to be honest. Bit by bit, the hunger comes back,” Fennelly told reporters after the Leinster final.
“I’ll never say it’s the last hurrah. Myself and [his girlfriend] Aliyah are going to Dubai in January. We were supposed to go in November but we’re looking at January now.
“She’s very good. She’s literally just waiting around. Fair enough, I have the hurling. She doesn’t have that and, again, it’s just that support that you have that makes things a lot easier.”
As for TJ Reid, who in 2012 considered retirement before hurling immortality beckoned, Fennelly wasn’t giving him any leeway for a dip in performance owning to fatherhood: “He’s not the first man in Ireland to become a father so I’m not going to worry about him too much and we’re not going to let him give us any excuses,” smiled Fennelly. “TJ’s down practicing frees in training and doing what he normally does.”
Mullen, who emerged from defence with the final possession of that titanic Ballygunner semi-final, says the bonds built over campaigns at club and county level only deepen their interplay, that mix of innate understanding and mutual work ethic.
“You’re creating relationships with them both on and off the field. That can only be a good thing when you go onto the field.
“Having hurled with Eoin [Cody] all the way up, you know his strengths and weaknesses as a player. You know what they’re going to do when they get the ball so it does benefit you.”
Cody and Mullen, another Ballyhale duo for the decade to come.
As Holden said after beating Ballygunner, “It’s as much about Christy Cody as Eoin Cody, Seán Reade as Richie Reid.”
And it’s a hell of a lot about Colin Fennelly and TJ Reid.