The Dublin machine is purring. Brian Fenton is revving up already.
Dublin picked up in 2018 from exactly where they left off in 2017. They left off as All-Ireland champions. They began this campaign with a business-like destruction of Kildare.
No fuss, all work.
Jim Gavin's men were slow to get going in Croke Park on Saturday evening. They conceded an awful goal to Kildare's Luke Flynn as early as the 8th minute of the game.
Their defence was ring-rusty in that first period - which is to be expected, and excused given the team are fresh from a celebratory holiday. They trailled the Lilywhites by two points going into the interval, and deservedly so.
Jonny Cooper was pulled up for diving, Davy Byrne didn't look at the races. Their usually slick forward unit was static, and not as in-sync as we've come to expect. They were rusty.
https://twitter.com/SportsJOEdotie/status/957352844918775809
Apart from Brian Fenton that was. One of the best midfielders in the game, Fenton was all over the hallowed Croke Park turf from the first minute to the last in this opener.
He was at the races from the word go, effortlessly striding through the Kildare rearguard, picking up possession on countless occasions and nearly always doing something positive when he had it.
This man isn't content to to pass the ball sideways, he isn't content to relax. He's hungry, he's starving, he's always sniffing and probing.
He wants the ball and when he gets it everything is under control. Everything is Dublin's. He bursts forward with all the grace of a man who could solo a ball across a tightrope. He does it with the composure and calmness of a man who has eyes on the back of his head and can see his tacklers in slow-motion approaching him.
Because he just bullies them out of his way.
And when he does that, when he does man-handle them, he wants more and more and more and he just goes and explores. All calm.
And then he's gone.
Just look at his first point of the game. It's liquid stuff, it's explosive stuff, it's Brian Fenton stuff. The power, the speed, the strength. The man bounces past his Kildare opponents as if they were polls stuck in the ground.
The upper body strength to drive his way past those men in white is underestimated because only because he makes it look easy.
He looks like a man who's been flat in the gym all winter, but watching Fenton, it all seems so natural - and given that he is just back from a team holiday - maybe it is, maybe he is just a freak of nature.
https://twitter.com/officialgaa/status/957334710333603840
He just makes it look so easy. He kicked 1-3. He was man-of-the-match.
And again.
https://twitter.com/officialgaa/status/957346347954376704
