Fox goes the extra mile for Ferbane and hopes to make it count

By Kevin Egan

It’s a Tuesday night in October, and Leon Fox has made the trip from Drogheda to Ferbane, because his club senior team has just been training for this Sunday’s county final against Tullamore (4pm). Throughout the summer, he’s been up and down for either Ferbane or Belmont, following on from a winter and spring when he did the same for the Offaly hurlers.

Now in his seventh year as a Garda in Louth, Fox travels approximately 700 miles to and from his home clubs every week he’s training, and has clocked up probably the best part of a quarter of a million miles on the road overall. But right now, with Sunday’s county senior football final looming, he’s not focusing on the distance he’s covered – he’s thinking about the rest of the journey, and what he can do along the way.

“I have three out of the top four medals in Offaly; Division One hurling and football league, and a senior football championship medal, so if you look back at it that way, not too many people have that. But we definitely should have added to that roll of honour behind me,” he says, looking up at the walls in the Ferbane GAA function room, where the myriad of successful club teams, both Ferbane and Naomh Ciarán, are honoured.

“There has been a lot of heartbreak between semi-finals and finals, I wouldn’t put last year’s game (against Tullamore) as the pinnacle. We were so close, but the weather and everything meant it felt like we never had it in our own control. I just love playing for my club. I am 31 now and I haven’t long left so I just want to win what I can with my best friends.

“2016 was probably a bit too soon for the group, in ’17 we underperformed, then we had the ’18 semi-final defeat and then two penalty shootouts, so we have definitely underperformed. But you are meeting a very good Rhode team and a very good Tullamore team so you can have no complaints that way.”

With Belmont, there has been arguably even more heartbreak, culminating in that devastating loss to Shinrone two years ago where the eventual championship winners scored two stoppage time goals to prevail by a single point in Birr.

Even this year, on paper the club’s outstanding league final win was soon forgotten as four defeats followed in the next four group games, but in the first three – the fourth against Shinrone was a dead rubber – Belmont were either level or in front going into the closing stages.

They’re still not that far off, and an extra few gallons of diesel is a price Fox is happy to pay to make sure that he will be on the pitch if that breakthrough comes.

“Knowing my luck, if I left one of them would win so I would be raging then. People often say to me why don’t you play with a club in Louth or Dublin, but a Dublin county medal or Louth county medal would mean nothing to me. This is my club. This is where I’m from and this is where I want to win.”

Neither Belmont nor Ferbane looked like winners in the group stages, with Fox adamant that this year's football format “took the goodness out of it”, whereas “every game mattered” in the hurling championship.

In any case, a quarter-final with Rhode was the perfect tonic to set Ferbane back on track, albeit at that stage, Belmont still had to make sure to avoid hurling relegation.

“In Offaly football, if you are going to win a county title you have to beat Tullamore and Rhode so no matter if you finish first or eighth you are going to have to play them eventually. They are the two top dogs,” Fox said.

Fox admitted that Ferbane “stumbled through the group stages”, adding that in addition to the narrow defeat to Shamrocks, both Durrow and Edenderry should have beaten his side. He pointed out that they could “have been in a quarter-final without winning a game”.

“But Rhode brought out the best in us and flicked that switch in us. We realised the talent we do have,” he said.

Unlike last year’s semi-final against Rhode, which was undoubtedly the game of the 2023 championship, this year’s quarter-final tie was a low-scoring, dour encounter. But in Fox’s opinion, it was still a great game to bring the team on.

“You could feel the tension on the field. Every tackle is a hard tackle while every handpass and kick pass matters. The quality Rhode have is massive and even though Niall Mac (McNamee) wasn’t togged out, you are still fearful he would appear!

“Rhode brought out the best in us that day and hopefully we are kicking on now at the right time.”

If they are, maybe Ferbane can claim the Dowling Cop on Sunday. And if they don't, Leon Fox will be back on the road next year anyway. It’s what he does.