Andy Fenton started at corner back for Galway in the 1979 All-Ireland senior hurling final against Kilkenny, the clearest sign yet that the revival he had helped spark years earlier was real. He died on September 30, 2026, in his seventies. For decades afterward, Galway hurling people pointed to his generation as the one that turned the county's fortunes around.

Seven years before that final, Fenton had played centre forward on the Galway team that beat Dublin 2-9 to 1-10 at the Gaelic Grounds in Limerick to win the county's first All-Ireland Under-21 hurling title, in 1972. It was Galway's first All-Ireland hurling crown at any grade in nearly fifty years. Fenton kept his jersey from that match for the rest of his life. In a 2021 interview for the 'Game of My Life' series, he recalled the moment it sank in: "After the final whistle it didn't take us long to realise how special that win actually was because we were the first team to bring back an All-Ireland hurling title to Galway in nearly 50 years," according to the Irish Examiner.

That breakthrough carried straight into his own club. Kiltormer won the Galway intermediate hurling title in 1975, then the senior title in 1976 and again in 1977, with Fenton a central figure both times, the Connacht Tribune reported. Galway Bay FM later placed him at corner back, his customary position, on its all-time Kiltormer team of the 1970s.

Galway GAA chairperson Paul Bellew called Fenton "a stalwart of Galway hurling and Kiltormer" and "a man of firsts," crediting him with helping start twenty-five years of success at the club that eventually produced an All-Ireland title in 1992. "Andy was at the core of that group who were the trailblazers for all of that, both in Galway and Kiltormer," Bellew said.

Fenton lived at Ballydonagh, Kiltormer. He is survived by his wife Anne, his children Deirdre, Cathal, Aoife and Enda, twelve grandchildren, and his siblings Ann, Felicity and Tomas, according to Galway Bay FM. He reposed at Kiltormer Complex on October 2, with funeral Mass the following day at St Patrick's Church, Kiltormer, and burial in the adjoining cemetery.

Two things still carry Fenton's name through Galway hurling: the Kiltormer honours board, where the 1976 and 1977 titles opened a run the club built on for decades, and the record of the 1972 Under-21 final, still cited as the match that turned the county's hurling fortunes. He wore the Galway jersey against Kilkenny in Croke Park in 1979, and the Kiltormer jersey in the years that made the club a county power.