SCHOOL DAYS:Former GAA president Seán Kelly recalls his time at school
SEÁN KELLY has an expansive recall of his school years in Kerry, first in his home place of Kilcummin, later in Tralee and Killarney.
The memories spring forth with an amiable fluency. On a day of great spiritual fervour, he purchased his first football. He also made his First Communion.
"That was a very important day: a great day and a great purchase. A good investment. There was nothing else really, other than football, and for years after there was nothing else in our parish.
"A soccer team started in the 80s but that was the first time we'd seen a game other than football in the parish."
His first organised game was the annual match played between Kilcummin and one of the other parish schools, Coolick or Annabla: "My brother Pádraig, God be with him, he's dead now since, and another fella, Tom Russell, picked the team. I got on it one year and it was as good as being on the Kerry team in an All-Ireland final. I think we got hammered in the game, but it didn't matter much."
Sixth class saw him uprooted from the country for the relative metropolis of Tralee. Football defined the syllabus at Tralee CBS as much as maths or Irish.
"One of the teachers, Micheál Hayes, was a fantastic man. People talk about unsung heroes and he would be one, not so much for the work he did - there are thousands of people doing that - but for the pioneering work, his vision, his ability to take young lads in Tralee and organise them into a team. He was very mathematical as well; he had things well organised . . . He was very innovative and was probably a coach before coaches were ever even heard of."
Kelly played club football with Kerins O'Rahillys while in the town. One day, in an under-14 town league match, the nippy corner forward, recently blown in from the country, lobbed the Austin Stacks goalkeeper from 20 yards. Seán Kelly gives a still-astonished bark of laughter at the moment. It was a glorious fluke. His attempt at a point had simply fallen fortuitously short.
"It was hailed as an outstanding goal. There was no one there to contradict it. And it was the winning of the match. John Dowling (Kerry's All-Ireland-winning captain in 1955 and an O'Rahillys clubman) came along and asked, 'Where's the little boy who scored that great goal against the Stacks effers?' He bought me an ice cream.
"Adults don't think of those things, but a young fella does. And especially for me, coming into Tralee from the country, to get that from someone like John Dowling, who was a god really."
He took up boxing in Tralee too. "There was a kind of razzmatazz about it, putting on the gloves and, of course, being able to flake all around you legitimately. But it was a great experience. Everybody should take up boxing, I think. One of the great things about it is the discipline it gives you."
His secondary schooling was at St Brendan's College, Killarney. The school was boarding and had its rituals. One was the "baptism" of first years by older boys. This involved a head and a toilet and downward force. He somehow escaped the usual receptacle. His reward for eluding the toilet bowl was a dunking in the more salubrious environs of a sink.
In 1969, the school won its first Hogan Cup: "The final was superb. It was a massive occasion. It was huge for Kerry because it was the first time a Kerry school had won the Hogan Cup, which was amazing really when you consider the strength of football in Kerry, particularly in St Brendan's itself."
One telling image stands out in his mind: "We played a Munster final when I was in first or second year. A fella from my parish, Dan Dwyer, and another guy, Jim Coughlan, were playing. We won and we were delighted. But after the game, while the two of them were still togged off, they started smoking in the middle of the pitch. To me as a young fella, this was unbelievable. By rights they should have been banned, but because they were footballers and because they'd won, no one said anything to them."
Later in life, his teaching career took him back to St Brendan's. He made a beeline for the football pitches, just as he had at break-times as a pupil: "I loved training teams in the school. I often wonder how you could actually be a teacher without being involved with pupils in some extracurricular capacity, because your relationship is totally different and they see you totally differently. They probably have more respect for you and you can relate to them better.
"Without the football, it would have been just a job, probably a boring job . . . I got as much satisfaction from coaching as I did from playing."
In 1992, he was a selector when St Brendan's won its second Hogan Cup. His brother, Fr Larry, co-trained the team: "It was one of the best days of my life because, having worked so long - we were teaching there since the mid-70s - it was only the school's second Hogan Cup ever. To win it after all the disappointment meant so much to so many people. And some great players came out of it, particularly Séamus Moynihan."
As a trainer, he won the Kerry colleges' competition, the Russell Cup, in 1996. It was a special day as his son Pádraig was on the St Brendan's team.
Teaching is behind him now but he enthuses still about colleges competitions: "It's without doubt the purest form of football and hurling because they're developed enough to be able to play the game but they're not old enough to be cynical. That wonderful combination of competence and innocence is something you get at colleges level which you don't get anywhere else."
