*Tony Kelly. Photograph: Gerard O’Neill
FOR ALMOST twelve months up to late May of this year, the question on all hurling followers lips wasn’t could Clare win the Munster or All-Ireland title but rather will Tony Kelly make a full recovery from the injury which saw him miss Clare’s league campaign.
The Ballyea man has been inspirational for both club and county throughout the past decade and the possibility of seeing those teams play without him was something that hurling followers everywhere didn’t want to consider
Speaking this week ahead of leading Clare out in Croke Park on Sunday the team captain recounted, “the most frustrating part was waiting to have the surgery done. First there was a fracture to my foot and I was on crutches and a boot for a few months because of that. It was still causing me problems and we went back and there was something else. I had surgery on December 15, under Stephen Kearns in the Bons in Galway, and I was lucky to get in before Christmas. Once the surgery was done there was a date to work towards for getting back. Five months from then was the return date and you are looking to see if you can get back in three or four. I kind of wrote off the league. The four months leading up to December was the hardest part”.
Hurler of the Year following Clare’s last All-Ireland success in 2013, he didn’t think it would take eleven years to get back to the biggest day in the inter-county hurling calendar. “When you are young you probably think this is going to be happening every second year. As you get older you get an appreciation of how hard it is and that is probably the biggest thing I have learned since 2013”.
Kelly recalled, “back then it was everything rolling into one, we came through minor with a good minor team, then won two under 21s in 2012 and 2013 and then a senior with eleven or twelve on it from the under 21 team”.
Hurling has changed in the intervening eleven years, the Clare captain maintained. “Back then it was probably a lot simpler in terms of training, management and S&C is huge now, it’s gone to another level, back then it was up and down the field, now it’s all about looking after the ball and if you are not doing that you will probably find yourselves six or seven points down in as many minutes. The game has definitely changed. We have seven from the 2013 panel, you can draw on that experience in the lead up to the final”.
He continued, “hurling is so so different now, it’s all about possession now, it’s completely different. Limerick were the first to bring in really looking after the ball and if you aren’t good at it, there is no chance of competing or winning. Hurling now is about efficiency and how you use the ball, decision making on the ball and use of the ball and turning that into a score, the rate that the scores are coming at. If you have a wide you are probably looking at a score at the other end, that’s how quickly the scores coming. There are a lot of differences in the game from eleven years ago”.
When Cork defeated Limerick in the second All-Ireland SHC, twenty four hours after Clare overcame Kilkenny, Tony watched it in the company of his teammate David Fitzgerald. “We were watching the game within the game, not the score but to the build-up to the score, having an eye on who was on the far side, are they going man for man, what are they doing with puckouts. The game was excellent, an excellent standard and better than their round robin game, it came down to the efficiency. In the second half when Cork got their chance they took it, as evidenced by Declan Dalton’s two points, they nailed everything. We are used to them, they are used to us, we will be trying to get to a level of consistency for a full seventy minutes”.
Qualifying for the final will only have any significance if Clare are to claim the Liam McCarthy, Tony maintained. “It will only mean something if you win. I have never been on the losing side in Croke Park in a final, we have lost three semi-finals there and you don’t want to have that feeling for the five month period until the new season begins”.
Consistency has been one of the biggest achievements of Brian Lohan’s five year tenure, the four-time All Star said, “the biggest thing Brian (Lohan) has brought is a level of consistency in being a challenge in Munster. He has that thing over the players, the minute he walks in he has your attention in terms of who he was for Clare. He has been there and done it and he is one of your own and one you look up to. He just sets the standard in terms of what he expects, not that previous managements didn’t. He came in at a great age for myself. Experience comes from playing games which really is the only way you will gain experience while as you get older, the biggest thing is patience, don’t force things, don’t run around like a headless chicken and end up on no ball”.
Looking back on Clare’s two point semi-final win over Kilkenny, Tony said, “we weren’t at the pitch of it in the middle eight in the first half, we weren’t using the ball well around the middle eight. We were wasteful, pucking ball in aimlessly to our forwards. In the second half we did better in getting SODs (Shane O’Donnell), Peter (Duggan), Fitzy (David Fitzgerald) on ball and it allowed myself and Ryan Taylor to get on the ball. That was the big thing we said at half time. We were going to use the ball better and work ourselves into the game”.
He explained, “from a players perspective you are playing because you want to play at the highest level and play for Clare, you are either good enough or not, the challenge is to get better and get back the next day, the team has that attitude. We played brilliant Munster finals and lost, we were really poor at the weekend in the first half and we came back. You feed off the lads on the panel, especially the lads that don’t get on. They are the lads that are bursting their gut at training, doing the extra bit, they come back and bring up the levels. Brian has brought in some excellent lads in the dressing room. We put on a burst and got back to two or three and then conceded a goal. When a big score goes in you need to respond from the puckout and we managed that. When you get your purple patch you have to make it count on the scoreboard. Last week we really made it count and we kept them from scoring”.
With a long list of accolades to his name, Tony is determined to add a second All-Ireland SHC medal to the catalogue of feats. “When you are young you want to make the Clare team. We were brought up on the team of the 1990s. Once you get in its starts to ramp up, it’s all about trying to win. We have been fortunate with the club, we dovetailed five or six inter county hurlers mixed in with five or six inter county footballers, we have been very lucky in that regard with experience. We are trying to add another one to the list now”.
