As the Managing Director of Kelly Timber Frame and vice-chairman of the Irish Timber Frame Manufacturers' Association, Alan McKenna is at the forefront of one of Ireland's fastest-growing industries. But his first love is Monaghan football - and he hopes the current crop can end a long wait for provincial glory. Inconsistency is possibly the source of most frustration for any county with aspirations of success. When you see your side produce top-notch performances against the best in the country, below-par displays against apparently weaker opposition can prompt plenty of teeth-grinding. Dentists in Monaghan may well have busy this past year or so, for the county team has arguably been the most inconsistent in the country. They are capable of dazzling days in the sun, something to which the undisputed top two in the country, Kerry and Tyrone, will both testify. With Armagh showing signs of a decline after a glorious decade, Donegal racked by internal strife and Down engaged in a rebuilding programme, Seamus McEnaney's side are rightly considered genuine contenders for a provincial title. That feeling is consolidated by their performances at Croke Park in August over the past two years, when they twice came within a whisker of putting the skids under Kerry. The defending All-Ireland champions on each occasion eventually pulled through, but the evidence of those encounters pointed to Monaghan as a coming team. But they can also throw in the odd nightmare, frustrating their followers and outside admirers alike. How to explain that Sunday in May 2008, when Fermanagh claimed a convincing Ulster Senior Championship first round victory over the out-of-sorts and indisciplined Oriel men in Enniskillen? Alan McKenna, a former player with Monaghan Harps, has experienced both the highs and the lows of following his county in recent years, and he remains fervently hopeful that a two-decade hunger for provincial success can be sated by the current crop. Alan may spend most of his time away from Monaghan these days - he lives in Dundalk, while the Kelly Timber Frame firm is based in Dublin - but as a contemporary of team manager Seamus McEnaney and having played with selector Adrian Trappe at Harps, he is a close follower of the county's senior football fortunes. He concedes that 2008 was a strange year for McEnaney's side, with a dismal performance in their first outing ending their interest in the Ulster Championship as soon as it had begun before pride was restored during the qualifier series. "It was an awful start," Alan recalls. "Fermanagh was always going to be a difficult game but our lads just didn't turn up on the day. I think most people were expecting us to launch a good challenge for the Anglo-Celt Cup, and we were all really hoping that would happen. But I can't explain it. They really threw it away in the first game." The qualifiers brought victories over staunch provincial rivals Donegal and Derry before a narrow defeat, for the second successive year, to Kerry at Croke Park. "It was a tough year but the lads performed very well in the qualifiers. We've been very unfortunate to come up against Kerry two years in a row. They've been the kingpins, the best team in the country for the past three or four years. They've probably only lost two or three championship games in the last five years. "But the lads gave it a right go, and if nothing else they proved that 2007 was no fluke. I think they've proved to themselves that they're up to that standard. We let ourselves down against Fermanagh, that only needs to happen once and the chance of winning Ulster is gone, but besides that they performed very well and - hopefully - that challenge for the Anglo-Celt Cup will come next year." Monaghan face Derry in the first round of the 2009 Ulster Senior Football Championship, and McKenna feels his countymen have the edge on the evidence of recent encounters. "We beat them in the championship in '07, and the qualifiers this year, so hopefully we'll keep that run going. Playing Derry in the first game, you know you'll have to be at the top of your game, so hopefully that will bring the best out of our lads. It'd be great to get our hands on another Ulster title. For a county like Monaghan, it's been a long, long time." As well as his work as Managing Director of successful home-building company Kelly Timber Frame, Alan is also vice-chairman of the Irish Timber Frame Manufacturers' Association, which represents approximately 90 per cent of timber-frame manufacturers in Ireland. As such, he is well-placed to describe the benefits of timber-frame housing. "There are several advantages to timber-frame, starting with the speed and ease of construction," he says. "It's a natural product so it has a higher thermal performance, meaning that it takes much less energy to heat. It's a naturally air-tight building, with less cold-bridging, which all helps to keep heat inside. It's estimated that it takes about 50 per cent of the energy costs as a traditionally-built home might take." With stringent new energy regulations gradually having come on stream over the past four years, McKenna feels timber-frame is the best product to generate optimum ratings: "All in all, timber frame is the perfect house type to comply with the new building regulations - all new houses now must have the BER [Building Energy Rating] certificate, which is an A-B-C system, and timber-frame houses easily achieve an A rating." McKenna is also confident that the market share of the timber-frame sector will continue to grow in the future as the public becomes increasingly aware of energy-efficient building and its responsibilities to reduce the collective carbon footprint. "With the way the economy is at the moment," he says, "the number of units being built across the whole building sector is down but the timber frame share is going up. Timber frame is a sustainable, natural product which is environmentally friendly. Concrete takes a lot of energy to produce, with a lot of CO2 emissions, whereas timber-frame actually takes CO2 out of the atmosphere, so I strongly believe that timber frame's market share will grow going forward." ** Established in 1998, Kelly Timber Frame is one of Ireland's leading suppliers of timber-frame homes. Headquartered in Finglas, Dublin 11, it operates a manufacturing facility in Summerhill, Co Meath and a technical office in Ardee, Co Louth. Tweet

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