For the first time since 1997, Tipperary will start an All-Ireland semi-final without Eoin Kelly but the former All Star is not ready for the sun to set on his career yet, writes MALACHY CLERKIN
USED TO be, you knew the years were zipping by at a rate with which you weren’t entirely comfortable when you got waylaid by a Garda who was significantly fresher of face than you. It’s less of a problem these days obviously, ever since they shuttered the factory in Templemore for a while a few years back. The Gardaí aren’t just older now – they look every day of it too.
But lest we get too comfortable in ourselves, here comes Eoin Kelly to remind us that Father Time will endure and remain undefeated. Here he comes talking about being a role-player for Tipp now instead of the marquee name of old. Here he comes with a veteran’s grace and wisdom – a man who had five All Stars before his 25th birthday talking now about doing his best in every training session to try to force his way into Declan Ryan’s team.
This is Eoin Kelly now, still just 30 but old enough to make the rest of us feel the years like lead weights.
For the first time since 1997, Tipperary will start an All-Ireland semi-final tomorrow without him in the starting side. In that period, Tipp have contested seven All-Ireland semi-finals and he’s top-scored for them in six – the only time he was pipped came in the 2009 turkey shoot against Limerick when Lar Corbett’s 3-1 toppled his 1-6. Even on that day, his goal after five minutes was the one that set a merciless tone for the afternoon.
Yet here he stands, part of it but apart. He was dropped before in his career, famously so in 2007 by Babs Keating. But this is the first time it’s happened organically rather than as a result of a manager trying to make some sort of convoluted statement.
Kelly started in the first round of the Munster championship but didn’t last 10 minutes into the second half, the arrival of Bonner Maher in his place rescuing a game that had been getting away from Tipp. Ever since, he’s been in the dugout by the time the national anthem is played. Waiting, watching, agitating. Not quite ready for sunset just yet.
“I started against Limerick and I didn’t perform that day. Maybe one or two things could have gone different and I might have had a good day. I was probably entitled to a penalty at one stage just before I came off. And you know, if I’d got it, buried it, maybe got the confidence up, you never know where the day would have gone.
“But these things happen and it’s how you react to them. I’d like to think I reacted pretty well when I came off and I’ve been very positive in training every night since. You would see the signs yourself that you might not be in the team but you just don’t know for sure so you keep at it. There’s always different roles for different lads. I’m not giving up the chase.”
No tantrums, then?
“Why would there be any tantrums? The way I look at it, I’m 30 years of age and I love doing what I’m doing. The guys who are in there are doing well so I can’t complain that I’m not in ahead of them. Training is competitive and I’m sure I’m not the only guy that does be shocked to find out he’s not playing. Every player wants to start but when you get the chance to come in, you want to perform as well.”
As seems routinely to be the case these days, there is talk of him carrying an injury, especially considering he hasn’t been training this week. There is no solid confirmation one way or the other, least of all from Kelly himself.
What’s beyond conjecture though is that the road behind him now is longer than for everyone else in the Tipp panel bar Brendan Cummins.
Tomorrow will be Cummins’ 71st championship appearance; if and when Kelly sees action, it will be his 58th. Only Corbett, with 50 on the board, comes close. The demands are different now, his place in the Jenga pile not just as fundamental as once it was. For most of his adult life, an off day for Kelly meant an early shower for Tipp’s year. Not anymore. Part of him welcomes the lightening of the load but part of him rails too at the idea that his influence has tapered. Show him the dying of the light and he’ll rage at it.
“It’s different alright. But if you’re depending on one marquee player to get the scores, that’s not going to be good enough. We have had a team over the past few years where scores have been coming from a lot of different places and we’ve been contesting All-Ireland finals on the back of it. I’m definitely happy with that.
“Some people judge hurling and I don’t know what they’re looking for. They might be looking for pace but I was never the fastest anyway. A lot of people look at last year’s Dublin and Kilkenny games and they write off a couple of people on the back of them. That’s probably the way people do it but you have to believe in yourself. That’s the way I am. You look at last year, we came up against seven- or eight-man defence against Dublin.
“The real hurling man will see other sides of a guy’s play. Some people will look at hurling and just see you scoring or not scoring as the case may be. But the real hurling man, he’ll see you maybe making a run to the corner, maybe holding up the play, maybe being a bit more physical and causing the ball to spill off you for the other guys to come on to. I’d say that’s a bit more in my game now than it was.
“You’re probably not as mobile and you’d like to think you would have a different kind of influence on the game. You’re more experienced, a bit more physical as well.”
The cosmic arm-wrestle that the Tipp-Kilkenny rivalry has become over the past four seasons has gripped Kelly as much as it has the rest of us. The three All-Ireland finals have been something but the day that stands out for him is the 2009 league final.
A stone-cold classic that ended with Kilkenny 2-26 to 4-17 ahead after extra-time, it was the game that gave those that came after it a context. Tipp’s first goal that day came after the forwards brutally mugged James Ryall in front of his own posts. The two sides have been on a war-footing throughout every minute of play since.
“For intensity, for everything, for skill, that to me was the best game. Eddie Brennan got a point in injury time in that game and it was some score. Can you imagine? He was after taking the hits all day and his tongue must have been hanging out at that stage with it being a warm day in May. I was in the dug-out injured but it looked to be some game from where I was sitting.
“We never referred back to it but it gave us belief that we can compete. We can be physical and we can have intensity in our play. We can play ball as well which is what you have to do. It gave us a shot in the arm that we haven’t looked back from. We might not have delivered All-Irelands but we’ve been fair consistent.”
If they call on him tomorrow, he’ll do his bit. Most have nothing of note between the first 15s tomorrow but there’s no doubting which manager can reach into the better-stocked larder if he’s an ingredient or two short. In their three matches so far this summer, Tipp have won the second half by five, five and seven points respectively and on each occasion Declan Ryan’s subs have pulled more than their weight.
Everything we know about this game will be funnelled into the opening 20 minutes and if Tipp are already gulping in air by that stage, Kilkenny won’t give them a backward glance.
“We know what we have to do. We feel we didn’t perform in last year’s All-Ireland. Definitely in the first 15, 20 minutes we were blown out of it. You have to match Kilkenny’s intensity from the off and if you don’t, you’re not going to be in the game. That’s something Galway did and something we did previously. We would still feel we have it in us.”
Just as he would still feel he has it in him. Years or no years, miles or no miles.
