Candid Kellie recalls losses
Kearney still frustrated by those missed opportunities
WHEN IT comes to sport, the search for answers isn’t an exact science. So many variables go into a team performance that ascertaining which had the biggest impact on failure is, more often than not, futile.
That hasn’t stopped Kellie Kearney pondering. And she has been pondering for a while.
As a writer, you never really know what you are going to get when you sit down and listen to a sportsperson speak. One can guide the conversation with questions, but that doesn’t mean you will get the answer you expect.
This writer was lucky enough to speak to Kellie for an hour last week. The aim was to talk about her inter-county career over the last ten years, but most of the conversation drifted back to a string of five All-Ireland quarter-final defeats in a row.
The focus on successes came and went quickly. The losses sting, probably more so given the collapse of the squad this season.
The first of those last eight defeats was against Kildare in 2015, the only one in which Wexford were never really in the game. Sligo was a huge disappointment twelve months later, before Tipperary needed extra-time to see off Kearney and her team-mates in 2017.
Tyrone knocked Wexford out on their way to All-Ireland glory in 2018 before the sheen of a Leinster title was wiped right off with a soul-crushing defeat to Meath at the tail end of last year. It seems to be that one that really slices Kearney hard.
‘I don’t know if that’s ’cause we are peaking too soon, or because when we go into the next big game, I don’t know if our homework’s not done,’ Kellie said. ‘I do think you learn so much more from losing then you are ever going to learn from winning.
‘When you’re playing someone for that amount of years, you’d be thinking about them more than us. For the Leinster final we actually just said it to Anthony, “stop f...ing thinking about them, think about ourselves and we will do this”.
‘It was probably the one time that we literally did forget about the opposition and did just think about us and focus on us, what we were going to do and how we were going to put our gameplan to them.
‘We were in the winning mentality there, we enjoyed it obviously at the time but we didn’t learn enough, looking back, we didn’t learn enough from it, to push past them again.
‘You know, it’s easy to say when you’re after beating them, it’s easy to say, “oh, they’re not going to give it to us handy the next time”, and I know we all know that deep down, but what did we do? Looking back, what did we do to try to change that?’
For Kearney, the yearning for victory was obvious but her experience left her wondering if it was the same for everyone. She wondered if there was a fundamental difference between her generation and those arriving on the scene now.
‘Losing the All-Ireland final [in 2013], my life was football, that would have killed me. Whereas I don’t think it’s like that any more, times are changing. I’m not saying that none of them care, but I do think there is a massive change.
‘I don’t know if it’s their attitude. I’ll use this as an example, losing to Meath last year, in the All-Ireland quarter final, if you take the older people including me and Clara [Donnelly], we were probably like crying on the bus on the way home whereas the young ones just wanted to go to the pub and drink.
‘That’s not [me] being smart. That could be a build-up of playing for so many years and not f...ing getting there again. You are playing for whatever amount of years, you do play for the enjoyment of it, but it does get to a stage with county that you are after giving so much commitment and putting in so many years, you are literally like, this is my last year to win.
‘You are still enjoying it but you want to win, I don’t know if that’s just getting older, or whatever, I know it’s easy to say each time [that] you want to win but I don’t think you appreciate it and never appreciate winning ’til you start losing.’
The hunger for victory was clear to see for Kearney, not only in her words but her actions. She badly injured her foot for her club, Shelmalier, in the weeks leading up to the All-Ireland quarter-final, but nothing was going to keep her off the field.
‘I know myself, I probably shouldn’t have played that match but I’m competitive, regardless if I had a broken foot or not. I was probably selfish in a way because I really felt like it was our year last year.
‘So for me to play with a broken foot was no question, like I obviously shouldn’t have played, I shouldn’t have togged out and I should have given someone else an opportunity, but like for me that was our year.
‘When I did that to my foot, it was a week before that we were going out to play an All-Ireland quarter-final but, like, there was no question in my mind that I was going to play if Anthony [Masterson] and all let me play, there was no question.
‘Obviously, I didn’t go for a scan and all because then it would have been in black and white, so for me to do that, I have the passion to do it.
‘That’s the way that I grew up, like, I will not miss a match, literally I would play with my leg falling off.
‘I would do anything to be put on a pitch for a big game whereas I feel like, even for some of the younger ones coming up, and this is only what I can see even in relation to training and stuff, they have injuries way quicker and way easier.
‘If I had a pain in my hamstring I’d push through it to get through the training. Their mentality is like, “oh, I have a pain in my toe so I won’t train”.’
Kearney has clearly come a long way from making her debut against Offaly in 2011 to the most senior of Wexford players now. Back then she was coming off an All-Ireland Minor ‘B’ win and things continued to be bright as the early seasons came and went.
Her Shelmalier side were at the forefront of Leinster football. They were provincial champions after beating Foxrock in the 2012 decider when she was thrown into the deep, appointed Wexford captain for the 2013 season.
‘I remember thinking to myself, “what the f...”, not in a bad way, but I remember thinking how am I going to do this [but] obviously say nothing, sort of thing. I would have been really quiet [then]. I was on the county team from when I was 16,’ Kellie recalled.
‘I would have had the likes of Rosie Lawlor, Cat McCabe, Mary Rose [Kelly], I would have had the benefit of their experience to look up to, so I didn’t feel any pressure being captain because they were always there for us.’
While that season ended with Kearney leading Wexford out onto the Croke Park field, they were underdogs against Offaly and ended up losing. The following season they did make the leap, beating New York to gain promotion to the Intermediate ranks.
‘It’s mental, you’re warming up in a little astroturf area at the back of the dressing-room, which is literally a tiny area,’ she remembered. ‘Like, the whole experience was mental but it is what you dreamed it to be.
‘Obviously, I was down and upset I wasn’t starting but I was so proud of the girls to get back there again, I was never angry.
‘I didn’t look down on a manager, saying why am I not starting, I would have been so proud of the girls and when we won it was just a relief to win, we always knew we shouldn’t have been Junior.’
They had to keep their momentum going into 2015 but had a change of management, with Shane McCormack coming in to replace Billy Donnelly. Kearney’s personal development as a footballer can be linked to this spell, as she slowly turned herself into Wexford’s shining light.
Kellie is keen to point out that she doesn’t believe McCormack got the credit he deserved for the development of the side.
While trophies eluded Wexford in those seasons, Kearney believes they were a key stepping stone to what followed.
‘I don’t think his work was praised enough actually after winning to build us,’ she said.
CONTINUED OPPOSITE
For me to play with a broken foot was no question...I will not miss a match, I would play with my leg falling off
‘We were never fully used to playing as a team, but Shane just came down and identified 15 players and was just like, “you are going to get used to playing with each other”.
‘No matter if it was a league game, a practice game, he literally played the same 15 players and rolled in either one or two, a corner-back could change or a corner-forward could change.
‘The difference we felt playing with each other and getting used to playing with each other because he gave the players the time to do it. I know that’s hard if you are a sub, but literally everyone bought into what he wanted to do.’
While the end of last season was just another heartbreak, Kellie does put the Leinster success down as her best memory in a Wexford jersey. After so many tough days, it was finally a prize targeted and accomplished.
‘We’ve had so many years of not winning anything that I can appreciate that one even more,’ she said. ‘Even the All-Irelands, they were brilliant but [at that stage] I would still have been used to winning, I wouldn’t have lost a lot in my career.
‘I love playing sport, I love playing football and I love playing for Wexford, but it’s not the same when you are losing. I just think the Leinster final was for everyone who was involved.
‘The likes of Mary Rose, I couldn’t have been happier for Mary Rose, that they left on a high, they deserved it more than we deserved it.
‘That’s the way I looked on things, I wanted to win things for them as well and obviously growing up with them from a very young age on the panel, not only did we want to win for ourselves but we had it in us that we wanted to do it for them.
‘I think it was said even on the bus on the way home, it wasn’t just for the 30 players on the bus, it was for every single past player that went on before us. I think I even text Maeve Quill after, saying that was for you.
‘I had played with them from such a young age and I could see what they put in to actually win it, to win that Leinster final was massive for us. Obviously, we didn’t go any further but I do think it was massive for us as a team.’
However, things quickly fell apart for Wexford coming into this year, and it’s hard to see any way back other than the long way. ‘I just now feel like it’s in decline,’ Kearney lamented. ‘There’s a big decline there now.
‘I do think it’s very hard to find someone to come in with the passion, I should have someone coming in trying to take my position. Do I have any fear of someone coming in and taking my position? No. That’s one thing that we are lacking.
‘Yes, there are people out there that are one hundred per cent good enough to play county and won’t play county, I completely understand that. Me, myself, as a manager, if I was a manager, I’d rather have people there that want to play and want to be there.
‘The other side of that is you have to try get [those] players there, make a genuine effort to get them to play for us, if they don’t want to fair enough. There’s a difference between wanting to play and able to play too, like it’s football at the end of the day, it’s not athletics.
‘You still need to build whatever team you can. Fair enough, if people don’t want to play you can literally only do what you can do with what you have.
‘I don’t know how it developed, I honestly can’t tell you how we are where we are now. Looking at us I genuinely don’t have a clue how we got to where we are now, compared to what we have been doing in the last couple of years.’
As for the future, Kearney just doesn’t know what it holds. Her work as a garda in Bray makes things more difficult. She now works four long days on, four days off, but those days are weekend days too and sometimes they can often clash with matches.
‘I can’t say that I’d be able to book them off or get them off, it’s too hard to be able to do that. This year was a massive eye-opener to me, just the fact that the way shifts go I was literally making one match out of the seven, so for me it was kind of like I was just coming in and out.
‘I didn’t want to be that person that wasn’t at training for two or three weeks and then just turns up to play a match.’
For now, all Kearney can do is look back, not knowing for sure what the future holds. While it seems unlikely, if she never kicks another ball for Wexford she owes her county nothing.
From being on the substitutes’ bench for the 2014 All-Ireland final, nobody worked harder, and nobody made anywhere near the improvements she made, to become arguably the best Wexford player of her generation.