Pádraig Brennan on Sash success and Kildare glory

Pádraig Brennan was born into a Sarsfields mad household. His father, Peadar, a stalwart of the club and his sister, Shirley, who would one day be Chairperson, just as two examples. On Christmas Day 1978, that green and white home was given what became one of the club’s great forwards years later, Pádraig Brennan.

“My father played football with Sarsfields until he was about 47. The club put up a picture of the 40th anniversary of Sarsfields winning the Junior ‘C’ Championship recently and both my father and uncle were on the team. The picture was gas because I was in a homemade Sarsfields jersey that my mother made me at aged five. I was the mascot,” Pádraig said.

For those familiar with Pádraig’s game over the years with his Kildare and Sarsfields exploits, you may have noticed the Brennan family skill that he learned from his father.

He said, “My father used to do a thing called a dummy solo and it was something that I copied off him when I started playing. I used it forever and it was him I got that from.”

After a man of the match display in the ‘96 Minor Championship final, scoring 0-10, the young forward quickly got himself into the senior side that reached the ‘97 county final, losing to Clane. The following year, Pádraig was on the Kildare panel that won the Leinster Championship.

“I was brought onto the panel in September (‘97) and my first game for Kildare was in a challenge match against Dublin in the Iveagh Grounds. I actually played okay and scored a few points, then a couple of weeks later I found myself starting in the National League  and managed to do okay and stay in the panel. We kicked on into the ‘98 season and we know what happened after that,” Pádraig explained.

“It was an incredible time. When I look back now, I just feel that I was fortunate to get onto the Kildare panel at that stage. It was such a fantastic group of players and I was blessed to piggyback on their coattails. I managed to play in the league, get a run in the Championship and play the All-Ireland final. At the time I was thinking that ‘god isn’t this fantastic, this must be the way playing with Kildare is every year and we get to finals every year’.”

Sport has a way of dispelling such notions fairly quickly however and Kildare exited the 1999 Championship following a first round loss to Offaly. However, there was no lapse in activity for Pádraig, who had joined the Defence Forces Cadets a week after Kildare’s All-Ireland final loss to Galway.

In between Kildare’s Leinster successes, Sarsfields would re-establish themselves as the top team in Kildare with a 1999 Senior Football Championship win.

“That four or five year window for me was just incredible playing football and, funnily enough, this year it will be 25 years since we won the 1999 Championship. We’ll be out at half-time for the county final and my family are coming home from Brussels to be a part of it,” Pádraig said.

“The team that won in ‘93 and ‘94 for Sarsfields was a very young one. There was a very good team there and great minors coming through at that time. Then myself, Dermot (Early Jr.) and Niall Hedderman came onto the team in ‘97. Then ultimately we had Niall Buckley, who was a phenomenal footballer. It is hard to describe to people how good Nuxer was, him and Dermot were players apart. To be playing with him and have them on the Sarsfields team, we were fairly formidable.”

The turn of the century was a great time for the Sash forward, who also had been commissioned and finished his cadet training around the time of the 2000 Leinster final.

“It is hard to describe how exciting it was because back then it was a knockout Championship, every game was such a huge occasion. You would go to matches and you’d have 50,000 or 60,000 people at Kildare games. It is hard to even envisage that now, but, because it was knockout, it brought a level of intensity to it that you probably don’t see now until the latter stages,” Pádraig said.

“In ‘98 we played Dublin in the first round of the Championship and there was a full house for that game and the same as for the 2000 Leinster final, a sold-out crowd.”

After an inseparable opening encounter, the 2000 Leinster final between Kildare and Dublin was set for a replay in front of another packed house.

“It was such a huge game and such a huge occasion. I remember Colm Moran for Dublin just ran the show in the first half. We found ourselves six points down at half-time and this is where Micko came into his own. He had such experience in those scenarios. He was the calmest man in the dressing room at that time and we were all calm, there was nobody banging tables or anything like that,” Pádraig recalled.

“We knew we had a very good side and that we weren’t executing properly. That changed very quickly in the second half. I set up Dermot for the first goal and then Brian Murphy set up Tadhg Fennin for the second in the space of a couple of minutes. We were level, but we never looked back after that. We won by five points in the end.

“That Kildare team had such power, you had Willie (McCreery), Martin Lynch, Brian Murphy and Glenn (Ryan) at centre-back. We had the power to steamroll them in the second half. In the end, we won comfortably.”

Back at club level, Sarsfields were navigating the rise of their local rivals Moorefield, who in 2000 won their second ever county title and far from their last.

“When I first started playing with Sarsfields, there was always a rivalry, but it came to the fore massively throughout the 2000s and the remainder of my time playing. We played them in five county finals in my time alone,” Pádraig said.

The first of those was the 2001 decider, where Sarsfields emerged as 0-10 to 0-8 winners in a dramatic decider.

“It was the first time the sides had met in a county final. It was an incredibly intense occasion and I can’t remember a time that I was more nervous before a game than that, because you knew everybody. It has been described as one of the most intense club rivalries in the country and it was, that is the truth,” Pádraig recalled.

“We played well and we finished strong. I often remember when I won the ball on the sideline and popped it to Nuxer and he drove a handpass across the field about 30m. He played Aussie Rules so he could handpass it miles and he drove it into John Whelan, who put over a lovely score. That put us two points ahead and it was the winning of the game. They got us back the next year then, but it just kind of went like that.”

Pádraig claimed his third county winners medals in 2005 when he returned from Liberia on UN leave for the final that year. After leading St Laurences most of the way, Sarsfields were down to 14 before they eventually went behind to a late goal.

“The lads me threw on with about five minutes to go and Enda Freaney got fouled in the corner. I remember it well, I hit a good free to equalise and brought it to a replay. I struck it well and the wind managed to carry it over and that got us level. It is definitely one of my fondest memories,” Pádraig said.

The clutch forward thankfully still had enough leave to start in the replay and Sarsfields lifted yet another county title with a 1-11 to 0-8 win. The Sash would experience a slight dip in the years that followed and, despite being close several times, had not lifted Championship silverware in seven years.

“We had gone off the boil and, after a few years of struggling, Johnny Crofton came in as manager. He is a force of nature and as true a Sarsfields man as you’ll come across. He brings a sense of leadership and direction that is hard to come across. To say he was highly motivated with an over enthusiastic drive would be understating it. Johnny just doesn’t accept defeat and he just drove us through 2012,” Pádraig explained.

“He made me captain that year and to win a Championship as captain, was a dream come true really. I was proud to be named captain and then incredible to win it.”

After a Championship title win that culminated in a 2-11 to 0-11 win over Carbury, Pádraig then spent much of 2013 in the Congo and, after coming home again for part of the Championship, retired from football in 2013.

That was far from the end of his contributions to the club of course, with underrage and Minor Championship wins as manager and a year as senior boss in 2021. Pádraig has now been in Brussels with the Defence Forces and the EU Military staff for the past two years. He will return home for this year’s county final as part of the 1999 Senior Football Championship winning team and to share in memories that he holds near and dear with Sarsfields GAA.

He said, “My family have all given so much, far from just me. Sarsfields is very much in our hearts. I was blessed and delighted to play with Kildare, but playing with your club is just a different aspect. It has meant so much to me, especially because my family were so involved, my heart is with my club always.”