I need to hit another level: Michael Darragh Macauley

Tue, 27th August 2019

Michael Darragh Macauley has paid tribute to the contribution of his fellow midfielder Brian Fenton in advance of Sunday's All-Ireland SFC final against Kerry in Croke Park (3.30).

The Dubs have scored 17 goals in their seven championship games en route to this weekend's decider with Fenton (3-8) and Macauley (3-0) contributing six goals between them to that tally.

Fenton, who did not feature in Dublin's last Super 8 game against Tyrone, has scored in all six games he lined out in this summer - Louth (1-1), Kildare (0-2), Meath (0-1), Cork (1-1), Roscommon (0-2) and Mayo (1-1).

Macauley, for his part, scored goals against Louth, Cork and Roscommon.

"Look, he’s got it all," says Macauley of Fenton.

"He has the basic fitness and work-rate to get around the pitch but he has all the skills to back it up as well.

“He rarely has a bad game, which is impressive for any footballer.

"He kind of has a very high standard that he meets quite regularly. It’s impressive to watch him perform.

“He’s great to play with. Anyone who works that hard and gets around the pitch and is that good with the ball is obviously good to play with.

"He can go forward and back as well. Definitely he eases my workload at midfield alright.”

The powerful Ballyboden St Enda's clubman is looking forward to Sunday's clash with the Kingdom at GAA headquarters.

“I think I have another level to be honest, which I need to hit at some stage because we don’t have many matches left.

"But yeah, I feel good. I think a lot of this stuff comes down to getting a (good) run with the injuries.

“A lot of people don’t see what happens behind the scenes, people have niggles, people wonder why people don’t play, it’s usually because they’ve been picking up niggles or haven’t had a good run of training schedules.

"So I haven’t had a scratch. Yeah, all good, feeling good.”