Aidan gets it
âWe felt this canât be the way football has goneâ â Aidan Fennelly is rowing against the tide
Portlaoise may have lost their county final but their manager is fixed on changing modern mindset
Aidan Fennelly: âIt was difficult enough to get them to buy into it properly, to wholeheartedly buy into it. Some lads just didnât buy into it.â Photo: Tom Beary/Sportsfile
Dermot Crowe
Today at 02:30
Rather than wait for Gaelic football to change, Aidan Fennelly decided to change Gaelic football.
On taking over the Portlaoise senior football team last year, he wanted an emphasis on attacking play and nothing to do with blanket defence. After watching Portlaoise lose the county final to St Josephâs, 0-7 to 0-6, in an unspeakably dreary contest, he was determined to revert to a more traditional game, come what may.
When he took over the team after that defeat, he made it known to the players that changes were afoot. They would set up man-on-man and go fearlessly at teams. They would reject the modern defensive culture and all its works. Where did it get them? They reached the senior final again a fortnight ago, having scored 15 goals in four games. In the final they failed to score a goal and conceded three to Portarlington, losing 3-13 to 0-13. If he is managing next year they will be playing the same way.
Before the 40-metre arc was drawn up by the Football Review Committee, Portlaoise senior footballers were getting to grips with a similar concept in training. Fennellyâs management team came up with the idea in order to test his playersâ ability to shoot from distance and to encourage a more ruthless edge.
ââI would put an arc out near the 45 and say, lads if ye want to be able to play senior football for Portlaoise and youâre a forward you need to be able to kick points from there. Like, Jesus, that arc in Croke Park last weekend, if inter-county players arenât able to score 80 or 90 per cent of point efforts from that arc theyâve no business being inter-county players.â
But change like that isnât a smooth sail. He had men of like mind on his management team in Colm Byrne, who won a Leinster medal with Laois alongside Fennelly in 2003, Tommy Mulligan and Alan Daly. But it was others that needed convincing.
âI was fighting [resistance] from all corners throughout the year,â he says. âPeople were saying you have to drop two wing-forwards back. You have to drop the whole half-forward line back. Midfielders have to go back. One of the full-forward line has to go back. We were trying to stick to our plan to see if it would work.
âI donât want to say anything against Portarlington because they deservedly won the game but we more or less put ourselves in a position to try and win it. Weâd 15 wides in the game. We scored 13 so thatâs 28 scoring opportunities. Just to go the statistical route. Now donât get me wrong, Portarlington were deserving winners. We couldnât cope with their forwards. We said it from the start of the year, we were going to attack teams. I wasnât going to change my mindset for the final. We put ourselves out there. We gave ourselves a chance to win, but Portarlington were just too good for us.â
âFennelly had his mind made up on how he wanted a team to play long before last yearâs county final. âWe felt this canât be the way football has gone. We love the game and we all said we have the players to go out and attack teams. Weâve tried the defensive stuff for the last four years and itâs just not working.â
They brought the players together and outlined their plans. âI donât know if they believed what I was saying, if I would actually go through with this,â Fennelly says. As the year progressed, doubts surfaced. âOne of the senior players had a meeting with me and said, âListen, Aidan the game has changed since your day playingâ. And my answer to that was, âYeah, it has, definitely changed, it has become less skilful and we are trying to put the pace back into it.â
Ironically, the main resistance came from forwards rather than defenders.
âI hung our backs out to dry this year. I put acres of space in front of them. Like, they were going man-to-man, to man mark their men for the first time ever probably because theyâve gone through systems where itâs been all lads pulling back and you know if you lose your man someone else will pick him up.
âBut I never got one back complaining about the number of chances opposition forwards were getting. All the resistance I was getting was from the forwards. The forwards wanted to drop back. It was strange because I was trying to say to the forwards, like, why are you complaining when I am trying to get you into more positions to score? Which is your primary job. But itâs ingrained in them from [playing with] Laois and from growing up I think because all managers are going, âhere, you have to drop backâ.
âLike, I had at the start of the year one forward saying to me, âAidan, I am a forward, but Iâm not a scoring forward.â I said to him, if you are not a scoring forward, and I know you are not a great defender, where do I put you? What are you?â
Old habits die hard. âIt was difficult enough to get them to buy into it properly, to wholeheartedly buy into it,â admits Fennelly. âSome lads just didnât buy into it.â
To encourage players to be more attack-minded, in training they would call a free when a player passed the ball back or laterally when it was unnecessary to do so.
Last year Portlaoise averaged a goal every four games in the championship. This year they averaged almost four per game. They put three past Ballylinan in a one-sided opening round tie and in a stiffer test against Emo they scored 5-13 but conceded 3-14. With the holders, St Josephâs, waiting in the quarter-final, it was the first real test of their faith.
âI was getting it from everybody in the club, saying this doesnât work, you are going to get opened up by the better teams,â says Fennelly. âAnd it wasnât until we played St Josephâs, where we stuck to our guns despite what people were saying, and beat them 5-15 to 0-15, that people started to go, oh OK, maybe this does work.â
He reckons that 80 per cent of the players had been fully converted at seasonâs end. âBut there is that 20 per cent that, you know, theyâve played the last 10 years in that system and they canât get it out of their heads. Like the younger lads in fairness, theyâre more open.â
Some players dropped off. âI said it from the very first meeting I had with them that we need to be able to run to be able to play the game we want to play. There were a few lads who were into gym, gym, gym, gym. Look we really went against the grain. We had no strength and conditioning coach this year. Because we interviewed a few of them at the start of the year and they wanted three nights in the gym and I was going, no, weâre going to be a running-based team.
ââA few lads wanted to do the gym but not the running that was required. So two, three, maybe four lads who were on the team last year drifted away at different stages during the year.â
If the same management is in charge in 2025 it will be devoting more time to developing man markers. A change of that magnitude takes time. âI notice with our lads theyâve never had to do it [man mark] in their entire career because thereâs always been cover if they lose their man.â
They will âup the anteâ in terms of fitness training. âI think lads are at 50 per cent of their capacity when it comes to running,â says Fennelly. âI think there is so much more in them. I think the way they are training is just wrong. I saw lads, strength and conditioning coaches, over the years coming in and slowing up the team. They looked like fine specimens, but they were slower, less mobile. But if you talked to an S and C coach theyâd say I was nuts.â
Fennelly says that, aside from rule changes, reform can be driven by county managers being more attack-minded and willing to take risks.
âI was up at the All-Ireland final and if Galway in the last 10 to 15 minutes had [to have] gone for that they would have won it. But equally if Armagh had left Rian OâNeill up in the forwards and not have him in the half-back line they would have kicked many more points than they did.â
Watching his own county play defensive football has hardened his resolve. âI hate when I go to Laois matches and they are pulling lads back behind the ball. We are from Laois, we need to take chances. And OK it mightnât work out but at least we are putting ourselves in a position for it to work out. Like trying to minimise scores, you are never going to win anything doing that