KILKENNY’S NEW MANAGEMENT team should consider an approach to Colin Fennelly, with a view to getting the powerful full-forward back in the county set-up for the 2023 season. That was the view expressed by Antony Nash on the latest episode of GAA Weekly, a podcast available to The42 members.
Fennelly is part of the hugely successful Ballyhale side that last weekend secured a fifth consecutive county title. He won four All-Ireland medals with Kilkenny before stepping away from the inter-county game at the start of 2021.
With Derek Lyng having taken over from the long-serving Brian Cody, Nash feels the time may be right to ask the 33-year-old Fennelly whether he would like to play in black and amber again.
“I’m just wondering would Kilkenny go after Colin Fennelly now?” Nash said.
“You look at his physique, you know what he’s going to do, he’s going to take you on, he’s going to run at you. But as a defender when he’s taking you on you’re trying to step off so you don’t allow him to go through you – and when you do he’s got such quick wrists he flicks the ball over the bar.
“Kilkenny, with him as a focal point around those young fellas that are being brought into the team now, I think would be a way better team with him.
“I know he referenced before that he fell out of love with inter-county hurling. Was that a dig at the management or was that just at the game itself because some people just prefer (to concentrate on club hurling)? But if I were the Kilkenny management I’d be definitely putting a message through to him saying ‘When you’re finished with Ballyhale let’s sit down and have a chat. We’d love to have you back in.’
“Because he looks in fantastic condition still. The way I look at an inter-county team: if I go into a county I want the best 30 players in front of me for the meeting, and he definitely is one of those. To me he’s the best full-forward in Kilkenny.”
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