Tony Kelly is back in familiar surroundings, doing press on foot of the PwC GAA-GPA Hurler of the Month award. For a couple of years he was popping up all the time for this particular gong, a mature emphasis for the Hurler of the Year recognition he received as a 19-year-old back in 2013.
Injuries intervened and he spent much of this season being reintroduced to the team tentatively and bustling around in search of his best form. With an appropriate touch of wizardry he unveiled a vintage display on the biggest day of all, July’s All-Ireland final against Cork, decorated with an appropriately wizard’s touch for Clare’s third goal.
He describes the score as “purely instinctive,” the product of training and small-sided games. Then, analytical to a fault, he damns it all with faint praise, contrasting it unfavourably with team-mate Shane O’Donnell’s goal last year against Kilkenny before grudgingly unwrapping a model of understated accolade.
“Maybe the whole occasion adds to it. I don’t score many goals, I’ll put it to you that way. A lot of the goals I get are maybe from penalties or 21s. But it probably was one of the best goals from play that I’ve scored.”
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That good?
Clare’s All-Ireland, like the one at the outset of Kelly’s career, came without the preliminaries of a Munster championship.
June’s third successive defeat by Limerick in the provincial final looked to be sending Brian Lohan’s team along the exact same track as the two previous seasons – even down to an All-Ireland semi-final against Leinster champions Kilkenny, which on both occasions had provided a full stop to the year.
There were two variations that everyone agrees had a major effect. Lohan gave his team the week off, allowing time for reflection, according to Kelly.
“Why didn’t we get to the pitch of the first 50 minutes of the opening round against Limerick or get to the pitch of previous Munster finals? We had to watch it back and reflect on it. That was the biggest change from the previous years when we had gone back in on the Tuesday night and gone at it hammer and tongs again.
“That week off allowed for reflection and to come back on Saturday with a fresh approach. It also segregated the Munster championship from the All-Ireland competition even though I know they’re all the one. It just felt that the week allowed us to freshen up – maybe minds more so than bodies.”
The second variation emerges when he is asked what the difference was this year, compared to 2022 and 2023 and their elemental struggles against Limerick in the Munster final. Kelly pinpoints the upside of early player unavailability – panel-building in the league, a competition Clare won for only the fifth time.
“The nature of the way we went about the league: we won it but we also set our stall out that we wanted to give fellas game time who had been performing well in training, lads who had been on the panel the last couple of years but hadn’t seen much game time – they were given loads of opportunity to impress, the likes of Cian Galvin, Darragh Lohan, who had played in nearly every league game.
“It allowed us to develop players and if we needed them in the championship, particularly in Croke Park, they had that experience under their belts of game time this year at intercounty level, which really stood to them and helped us. “To answer the question, the biggest difference is strength in depth developed in the panel.”
Having won so much so young Kelly is mindful of the importance of almost vindicating that success after the long, largely barren interim of the following 10 years by adding the second All-Ireland.
“We were so young in 2013 that we thought it was going to happen not every year, but maybe every second year. With the minor and under-21 success as well, we just thought it was normal...That second All-Ireland probably just makes the whole intercounty career worthwhile, not only for me but for partners and family. It’s especially for them because they’re the ones who probably put their lives on hold.”
Vindication all round.
As well as Galway’s Paul Conroy and Clare’s Tony Kelly, who were announced as Players of the Month for July, Galway’s Nicola Ward and Dervla Higgins are the women’s July winners of the PwC GPA Player of the Month awards.
Both played significant roles in defence during Galway’s qualification for both women’s finals during July – Ward in the defeat of champions Dublin and then Cork in the football and Higgins for her part in the victories over Waterford and Tipperary.
Leitrim’s Ailbhe Clancy, scorer of 2-3 in the intermediate final win over Tyrone and Galway’s Aoife Donohue, whose 0-4 from play helped to fire her team in a great comeback that fell just short against Cork, have also won the PwC GPA Players of the Month for August in football and camogie with the finals of both codes taking place this month.
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