WHERE ARE THEY NOW
A TWO-time premiership player, homegrown Lara product Jace Kelly claimed the Whitley Medal in his maiden season in the GDFL. He was part of Lara’s 2001 flag.
AO: The coveted Whitley Medal will be awarded tonight and I’ve got the 2009 winner with me. Jace, what do you remember of that triumphant season?
JK: That was my first year back in Victoria after playing in Cairns. I got a phonecall from Shayne Stone, who is my cousin, when I was in the middle of New South Wales. He said, ‘What are you doing next season?’ I promised “Rock” that I’d come out and play with him. I remember heading out to Inverleigh and having a look at the deck and there was barely a blade of grass on it and I was scratching my head thinking, ‘I’ve just come from luscious grass and nice weather and now I’m playing on a cow paddock.’ I had a few niggling injuries early in the season but then we started to jel as a team. We had big Owen Lewis up forward, Troy Booth and a few of the Lara connections and Clayton Trotter, who had a ridiculous few seasons prior to me getting to the club. It looked like we were going to have a pretty awesome midfield with Jimmy Huybens in the ruck. We started to click and we played really good footy. We were quite good enough to match it with the top sides but, from memory, we might have run Bell Post Hill close. It was so good to be home and back in the heartland of country footy. I had a ball and Inverleigh was really receptive of me and it’s a great club. It was a complete surprise to win the medal. I rocked up thinking I was just getting a free feed and watch ‘Trots’ win and as the night ticked over I was getting votes and, suddenly, I won.
AO: Speaking of Lara, that’s where it all started.
JK: Yeah. I started playing senior football in ’95 and we had a few coaches. I can’t even remember their names, and enter Troy Mitchell. We’d just finished on the bottom of the ladder in ‘96 or ‘97 and that was absolutely demoralising. I played in the first Lara side to ever finish on the bottom of the ladder in Lara’s 100-plus year history. It was really sad, but at the same time, it really drove the group and we stuck together for the next five or six years to culminate in that 2001 premiership with Paul Lynch at the helm. It’s amazing now to go out to Lara now to see the guys that I played with are either committeeman or even higher up at the club. We were just lucky that we had Adam Pyne, Mick Sleeman and Matt Kershaw. We just had some awesome players. Troy Mitchell taught us how to be a good side and drove a really good culture. He took us to two grand finals and then Lynchy came to the club in 2001 and he was the icing on the cake. We had an amazing team. We had Zvonimir Suto, Shane Lowther, Cam Wright, David Wall and some really good local footballers and we knew that day running out against Joeys that, if we played footy, and there’s a whole range of other stories that go with that grand final, that we’d walk off the ground with a medal each, and that’s exactly what happened.
AO: What sort of a coach was Lynchy back in the day?
JK: Pretty much the same as he is now, just less a few grey hairs. He was pretty ruthless and he expected extremely high standards of everybody. He was the first coach to make me vomit. We had to do 400m in a certain time and I missed it by two seconds and he stood there and shook his head and said, ‘Go again,’ and I threw up everywhere. That’s what he expected of every single player. His ability to get that last little bit out of every bloke was his biggest strength.
AO: Where did you head after Lara?
JC: South Cairns up in Queensland. I played four or five years up there and played in three losing grand finals. The first one we were never meant to win and we lost in a kick after the siren. I came home and played for a year at Inverleigh and the following year I broke my leg against Werribee and that was the end of my season. Then I went down to Torquay and things didn’t quite pan out and I jumped ship five or six rounds into the year and went to Birregurra and we ended up winning the grand final and I was best on ground.
AO: So what are you doing now?
JK: I’m an exercise physiologist at Cottage Medical Centre on Torquay Rd and I’m also running my own business out of Anytime Fitness in Torquay and Grovedale. I had a year off footy last year. After playing I went straight into assistant coaching with Lynchy at Colac and then on to Lara and back to Birre. But now I’ve got a young family and my partner is still heavily involved with Torquay netball, so I look after the girls every Saturday and footy doesn’t fit at the moment. But I’m really keen to get back into it next year.