21 for ’21
The Kerry sports people for whom 2021 could be a defining year
BRIAN Kelly always came across as a happy-golucky kind of guy. On the pitch it was, of course, serious business, but the Killarney man, who retired from a nine-year inter-county career last week, always seemed to go about his business with a smile on his face. In the all too po-faced world of inter-county Gaelic games, Kelly seemed to carry himself with a good humour that, if not necessarily infectious to those around him, appeared to carry the man himself in good stead. It looked to us outside observers, at least, that he enjoys a laugh and can take a joke.
Perhaps it was fitting, then, that his call up to the Kerry senior football squad came on the day that it did.
“I think it was April Fool’s Day I got a missed call,” Kelly recalled to The Kerryman this week. “I rang it back and I wasn’t so sure if it was an April Fool’s joke or the real deal. But, yeah, I got a call and before I knew it I was playing in Tralee against Mayo on the (following) Sunday under Jack O’Connor.”
It was no joke. Kerry were held to a 1-12 apiece draw that afternoon in Austin Stack Park, and while Kelly didn’t manage to keep a clean sheet, the point was good enough to qualify Kerry for the League semi-finals.
A quick look at the Kerry team to start the semi-final against Mayo might suggest Kelly retained his place between the posts, but it was Kealy, not Kelly, who O’Connor opted for in a game Kerry lost by 2-15 to 1-17 after extra-time.
Still, it was the start of a wonderful nine years as a Kerry senior, several of which were spent competing with Brendan Kealy for the no.1 jersey. Kealy, himself, had taken over the goalkeeper’s geansaí in 2010 following the retirement of Diarmuid Murphy, who was by 2012 part of the management team with O’Connor.
“It was actually Diarmuid Murphy who called me that time. It was a nice phone call to get. It kind of took off from there,” Kelly says. “I kind of hung around the panel for a couple of years then in ’12 and ’13. I think the big thing for me was I went to UCC in 2014 for a Masters and the Sigerson (Cup) was a good springboard for me there. We won the Sigerson with a great team in UCC (and) I think that was one of the deciding factors in Eamonn Fitzmaurice giving me the number one jersey for ’14 and thankfully 2014 ended up the way it did.”
After that League debut against Mayo in 2012, it was another 22 months before Kelly started his second game for Kerry, a League win over Derry in Fitzgerald Stadium, this time Kelly keeping a clean sheet, although Kerry lost by two points. Kealy started in goals in the first and third matches of that 2014 League campaign but Kelly held the jersey for the other five, and clearly did enough to convince then manager Fitzmaurice to go with the Legion man over the Kilcummin man.
“I think 2014, that whole year, was a big highlight for me, both on and off the pitch. I went back to UCC that year and for whatever reason - I was up to my eyeballs doing college work and playing sports and travelling up and down to Cork - but everything just seemed to fall into place that year. I had a great time in UCC, made the Sigerson Cup team with UCC, which we won, made my Championship debut against Clare up in Ennis, that was a big highlight, and obviously went on and won the All-Ireland after that.
“I have very fond memories of my time in other years as well. 2016 playing against the Dubs [All-Ireland semi-final], we were very unlucky to lose that day but it was a great experience playing in front of the Hill that day. Playing against Galway in 2017 I just happened to have quite a good game that day as well. It is nice to have a couple of fond memories looking back now,” he recalls. “Other than that, there were a couple of small flicks and tips in the All-Ireland Final against Donegal that proved important on the day I suppose.”
He won a Munster minor championship in 2008 (losing the All-Ireland semi-final to Mayo), was part of the 2009 and 2010 Under-21 squads under Sean Geaney, and then took the starting U-21 goalkeeper in 2011 under John Kennedy “in my good year”, though it ended abruptly with that 2-24 to 0-8 hammering by Cork in the Munster final.
The following spring it was into the seniors “out of the blue really” as he says, with that barely believable phone call from a former All-Ireland winning goalkeeper to a future one.
Over the years Kelly has witnessed - been part of - the evolution of the Gaelic football goalkeeper, and he has an open mind on the evolving nature of the position and the role of the modern day goalkeeper.
“When I think back now to my minor and under-21 days, even 2012 and ’13 with the seniors, it was pretty much put the ball down and kick it out as hard and as far as you could really. In the space of a year or two things went kind of polar opposite in terms of having to win every kick-out. Primary possession was key. You were examined on
your kick-outs, that’s how you were judged really,” he says.
“I think the role will continue to develop. In the last few years you’re seeing the likes of (Rory) Beggan and Niall Morgan, they like to come out the field, I think you’ll see more of that. Obviously there has been a lot of change to the kick-outs over the last couple of years, the ‘D’ is now in play, (the kick-out) has gone from the 13 to the 21-yard line. Obviously you can’t receive a handpass back from the player you’ve just kicked it to, so they seem to be changing it all the time and I think it’s not finished yet...it could go back to the old days yet where the ball is just pumped out the middle. To a certain extent there is value to a lot of it but probably not too much. For a while there, it seemed there was rule changes every six months...a lot of them have merit and there is method to the madness, but I wouldn’t go tearing up the script too much.”
So much of the goalkeeper’s job today is centred around the kick-outs - or re-starts to use the vernacular - and retaining possession really is, for most managers and team, nine-tenths of the law, but isn’t the goalkeeper’s primary job to stop the ball from crossing the goal line? It always was, and always will be... and while Kelly has been guilty of a hairy re-start or two, no one can fault him on the art of shot stopping.
“A lot of fellas have different backgrounds coming into the game. For me it was pretty simple, I was thrown into goal at six years of age and I just stayed there for ever more, and that was both in soccer and the football. I grew up in Ardshanavooley, the same estate as the Gooch (Colm Cooper), so I was thrown into a lot of soccer matches and football matches [in the estate] against fellas who were a lot bigger than me, so maybe that bit of bravery rubbed off on me somewhere. I’m stuck in between the posts a long time now and the shot stopping just came with that,” he says.
And the men who’ve put the fear of God into him as he saw the whites of their eyes bear down on him?
“Inside in training, from a Kerry point of view, obviously (David) Clifford would be up there, but down through the years Paul Geaney and Jameso (O’Donoghue) don’t usually tend to miss when they’re bearing down on goal. So they were always a tough prospect to stop. Outside the county probably Conor McManus and Michael Murphy. Probably the way my career went I seemed to come up against them a good bit, and you could tell they were always dangerous. You could tell when they got the look in their eye that there was goal on their mind and you had to be wary of them.”
The logical follow up question is who were the men in the Kerry rearguard that Kelly put his faith - and fate - in most?
“Tough question,” he says nervously, possibly not wanting to offend a former team mate, or maybe damn one.
“I’d say in my first couple of years inside Marc Ó Sé was pretty awesome. He was in the full back line so we were communicating a lot. It was a lesson watching him going about his business. He was great bit of stuff to play alongside and he was very supportive as well since I joined the panel.
“I remember I nearly took the head off Marc in the Munster Final in 2014. He was commending me for it afterwards. There was a ball dropping into the square, and I suppose I fully committed to it... I remember him saying to me that night he was pretty happy that I did come and deal with it because he wasn’t sure where it was going.
He has, he agrees, been lucky with injury, or lack of them, but early in 2015 he did quite a bit of damage to his ankle in a training pitch incident, which kept him out of action for some three months. Kealy took back to starting jersey for 2015 but Kelly wrestled it back again for the 2016 and 2017 Championships, in which he played in those games against Dublin (2016) and Galway (2017) that he referenced as being particularly memorable. Two clean sheet, too, by the by.
In the summer of 2017 Kealy withdrew from the panel, leaving Kelly the clear first choice, but by the 2017 off-season Fitzmaurice had called Shane Ryan and Shane Murphy into the panel. Despite Kealy’s retirement, it still left three East Kerry goalkeepers vying for Fitzmaurice’s attentions, and by 2018 Kelly’s opportunities were becoming fewer and fewer.
Kelly played his last Championship game came in 2018, and when Peter Keane succeeded Fitzmaurice for the start of the 2019 season, Ryan had moved up the pecking order to be top boy. Sporadic League appearances popped up here and there, but with Kelly not having to spiton his gloves through the entirity of 2020 he knew his game was up.
“Look, (let’s) call a spade and spade, I haven’t played a championship match since 2018 so game time was probably a factor as well. I suppose the day that you’re happy on the bench is the day that you’re in trouble. The time just felt right and I’m happy enough with my decision.
“(It was) an accumulation of things really. The game’s gone more and more professional every year and the time that’s required to give it your all is massive. It’s turning into a seven day a week thing now almost, even the days you’re not training or you’re not in the gym there’s still a lot to be done in terms of recovery, watching your nutrition, being in contact with the medical and back-room team on your days off.
“When you’re inside with Kerry everyone gets every looked after and you get the best of everything and when you’re in the thick of championship and you’re getting regular playing time, you enjoy all the stuff that comes with it. You enjoy the chats with the medical team and the dips in the sea and all the stuff that goes on outside of the training pitch. But I suppose I’ve been involved for nine years and I’ve loved every minute of it, and I’m pretty proud of what I’ve achieved. And I’m happy now to park that and move on to the next chapter and explore other parts of my life.
“These things can come and go in cycles. I had a pretty good run of it there a couple of years ago and at the moment I’m obviously not in the number one jersey but that’s sport. That’s the way it goes. I was thinking back to before my Kerry minor days and if you told me that I’d be playing for the Kerry seniors for such an amount of time I’d have bitten your hand of. Look, I’m happy with my lot, happy with my decision and happy to call it a day.”
He says he will stay in touch with his former team mates as much as he can, plans on playing on with Killarney Legion and Killarney Celtic, and as a self-confessed “avid snooker fan” taking up the cue and potting some balls..
“I’ve seen it myself down the years that fellas leave the group and it can be hard to stay in contact. To be fair a lot of the lads I’d have played with down the years I’d still be in contact with but it’s like in any (team) sport or any walk of life, you do lose contact and you mightn’t see people for a few years. That does cross your mind, yeah, when you’re leaving it all behind and thinking about the decision,” Kelly, who turns 31 at the end of the month, admits.
“It was difficult to say good luck to the boys and say goodbye. Especially with Covid it will be difficult to stay in touch, or meet the lads at least, for a while yet. But I was talking to a few of the lads and I promised them I’d buy a set of golf clubs and I’d meet them on the fairways.”
Whatever about Brian Kelly making birdies, we’ve no doubt he’ll be just fine at
saving pars.