Given his time back again, Seán Kelly might do it differently. Six months after Galway’s championship ended, he continues to manage the ankle injury that curtailed him that afternoon in Salthill.
The Galway captain rolled his ankle in the latter stages of Galway’s round-robin loss to Armagh the previous week, but played through the pain barrier as Mayo came to Pearse Stadium just seven days later.
Even during the warm-up Kelly looked uncomfortable and his determination to play that day was not enough to prevent Galway slipping out of the championship.
“With the physio team we would have worked all week just trying to get it right, maybe looking back on it now I probably shouldn’t have played,” says Kelly.
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“But it’s one of those that as a player you want to play all these games and it’s probably something that I need to be like, ‘I’m not 100 per cent’. You want to play every game you can and maybe that’s just myself but it’s something to look at all right.
“I kept getting better and better during the week beforehand but obviously I wasn’t fully there. Maybe it was just that game came a bit too soon. As I said, it’s one of these injuries now I’m still carrying at the moment. Will I ever be 100 per cent with it? I don’t know.”
The injury spawned an unusual controversy that afternoon when video footage emerged of Mayo’s Ryan O’Donoghue appearing to intentionally target Kelly’s injured ankle during an off-the-ball scuffle at the start of the second half.
O’Donoghue escaped disciplinary action but the incident was widely debated in the aftermath of Mayo’s win. However, Kelly says he would rather the flashpoint had not become a talking point during the summer.
“I would have preferred if nothing was seen of it and we could all just carry on,” says Kelly.
“It’s one of those, in fairness I didn’t get caught doing whatever I did. I’m not going to be pointing any fingers or blaming anyone. Unfortunately, it got caught on camera but it didn’t, what would you say, make it worse or whatever.
“It didn’t bother me that much at the time. I was like, maybe, ‘Come here to me, I’ll get you back’ but obviously the game went on and I kind of forgot about it then.
“It’s one of those that you’d nearly just prefer wasn’t caught on camera. But as it is now, I just carry on, it won’t bother me too much.”
He missed the start of the club championship campaign with Moycullen because of a hamstring injury and also had to sit out the Galway final, which they lost to Corofin.
But the dynamic defender hopes to have his injury problems ironed out for the 2024 campaign. He will continue to captain Galway next season, with the Tribesmen aiming to get back to an All-Ireland final and this time go one step further than they managed in 2022 when losing to Kerry in that Croke Park showdown.
“It’s still something that’s on our mind, that we want to put that right from two years ago, and then obviously this year losing to Mayo, so it’s even more fuel to the fire you could say for next year,” adds Kelly.
“Hopefully we can push on. Obviously there’s a lot of work to be done and we’ll have to do as much work as we can this year because we didn’t do enough in 2022 or 2023 so it will have to go up even more this year. I feel that lads are ready for that and hopefully we can push on.”
The squad has been boosted by the return of Seán Mulkerrin and Kieran Molloy from injury, plus Liam Silke from his travels, though Peter Cooke’s availability is in doubt.
Either way, Kelly is only too aware that there are more important things in life than football. In October this year, his 20-year-old Moycullen clubmate Liam Davoren suffered life-altering injuries in an accident in Galway city centre.
His condition was so critical he was taken immediately to the head trauma unit in Beaumont Hospital and he was in a medically induced coma for nearly three weeks. The entire community are united in trying to support the family during this difficult period and Seán is helping to promote the HOPE4LIAM campaign.
“He was in hospital in Dublin but he’s back in Galway at the moment so he’s closer to home and it’s probably easier for the family to be able to go in and out,” says Kelly.
“Liam’s family are greatly involved in the Moycullen club and all local clubs really. It was just a horrible incident and the community now is just rallying behind him and hopefully he makes a recovery or whatever steps he can.”
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