*Clare senior football captain, Cillian Brennan. Photograph: Gerard O’Neill
SINCE HIS appointment as Clare senior football captain in January, Cillian Brennan has not yet enjoyed the honour of leading his county into battle.
A groin injury first sustained last April kept Cillian out of Clare’s entire National Football League campaign and restricted his matchday involvement to that of the maor uisce.
Saturday’s Munster SFC semi-final with Waterford will be the first time he is available for selection for Mark Fitzgerald and his management team this year, he has been named to start at full-back for this contest.
Speaking to The Clare Echo, Cillian recounted that he first started to get a “pinching” pain in his groin while playing in last year’s league but he was still able to get through games. “The first few initial games I was nearly playing better football than I did in a while I felt. When it came to the Munster semi-final against Limerick and when kicking a ball I felt a sharp pain down my groin, I went and got an MRI scan, it came up clear, I went on and played the Munster final but I wasn’t fully comfortable with it, I knew there wasn’t something fully right.
“I rehabbed it during the summer, I got it to a certain stage where I set it back again, again I was working off the understanding that there was no actual tear there and that it might be a case of nerve issues from the back, I said I’d chance playing one or two of the club games and I went into Santry at the end of September, start of October, they looked at the initial scan from April and they noticed there was a tear in the abductor there so they rescanned it and noticed it had got worse, there was a bit of backtracking to be done to make sure I rehabbed it fully and got back, they are just slow injuries unfortunately, we had enough of them with groins last year whatever it was whether it was surface, load or what we were doing but they test the patience for sure,” he reflected.
Players want to be on the field and such a long spell on the sidelines was “very tough,” the Ballynacally man admitted. “I’ve been fortunate that I haven’t been on the sideline too often in my career so it was something that was quite new to me but you want to try help the team in any way you can, you don’t want to be a negative influence around the place if you are tense when you can’t contribute on the field in the way you might like to that, you try give the lads their space and support them in any way you can. In those winter nights when we were training and rehabbing in the gym together it was nearly like a therapy group when we were all together, there’s lots of support there, the lads were all eager to get playing, my brother Shane is a physio and has been through plenty of injuries himself and has been a phenomenal support through it all”.
Now that he has come out the other side, Cillian is “absolutely raring to go”. He said, “Sharpness has taken a bit of time to get back, it is only natural, I’m only delighted to be back there and in the thick of it again, I’m trying to push myself on again and push on the lads around me”.
Brennan added, “It’s been a long journey since nearly this time last year when this injury initially started at me, I’m glad to be back on the field training now and trying to push lads on, put my hand up and try compete for a place in the twenty six or whatever role I’m good for”.
With a dozen of last year’s panel bowing out following Colm Collins’ departure as manager, Cillian has suddenly found himself as the most experienced member of the Clare panel. “That’s football, all the lads who went away have given great service to Clare and they didn’t owe Clare football anything, it is a testament to all those lads that have stepped up this year that while they mightn’t have been getting chances over the past few years they were pushing standards and pushing those lads who were playing over the last few years, it is great that they have taken their chance with both hands and it is important to keep pushing things on again”.
An Assistant Professor in Physical Education, Cillian is a lecturer in DCU’s Institute of Education on the St Pat’s Campus. His move to the capital has been “an interesting change to go up and settle into life up there, it has been busy, I was spending more time than I’d like in the Santry Sports Clinic which was very close to me up that way while I was up there, the lads were very accommodating earlier in the year when I was rehabbing the injury, they said I wasn’t needed on a Wednesday evening to go down and go back up if I was only rehabbing, they were patient enough with me to give me my time and I’d be down on the weekends helping out in any way that I could”.
In his role he is lecturing first and second year primary school student teachers and it is one he is enjoying. “I had been in Scoil Chríost Rí for a while when I qualified initially, then the opportunity came up to go to Mary I and do a PhD, I really enjoyed my time in the classroom but also in Mary I as well, I was part of a great PE team there and I get different type of experiences now in Dublin, it’s good to get different experiences and insights and push myself in different ways to see how I can develop”.
Given his vantage point from the sideline during the league, he was impressed with the aspects brought to the table by his teammates. “You can’t but be pleased with the character that the lads have shown across the league while some of the performances there was definite areas that we would like to develop and to improve on but there was character shown in the Offaly game, the fight shown there to work their way back into the game and to get a result out of it was phenomenal. It always comes down to and if there’s any team you’re with you want hard work and honesty, that was there in spades”.
Leading up to the start of another championship bid is always a time to embrace within an inter-county set-up. “That’s always the main goal for the year is to be looking ahead to championship and to do as well as possible in the league but championship is where the real football is at and we’re only raring to go”.
On their aims and objectives, he detailed, “The same as any year for any league or any championship, it’s first round and that is all it is, it’s Waterford on Saturday and we have to be fully ready for that, we know it is a huge challenge going down to Fraher Field, it is not an easy place to go and we have to be fully on the ball to try get a performance so we can get a result”.
Although Cillian has not played senior championship in Fraher Field, both of his older brothers Gary and Shane have tasted stern encounters away to Waterford in championship. “We’ve plenty of experience between Gary and Shane playing there over a number of years, I’ve never actually played there myself, it’s a tough play to go and if things don’t go your way it is a long journey home, we’ll be doing everything we can to make sure we’re ready for that battle next Saturday”.
Waterford “will look at it as a huge opportunity” to take down Clare, Brennan maintained. “They will have huge momentum from the Tipp game, they will see us as a chance to get into the Munster final and the All-Ireland championship, we have to do everything to earn the right to get into the Munster final and be ready for that”.
