GAELIC GAMES NEWS:KERRY MANAGER Jack O'Connor will invite returning AFL champion Tadhg Kennelly for trial in the weeks ahead to assess his form for the season ahead.

The Listowel native, who played underage for the county, this week announced his intention to return home permanently after nearly 10 years with the Sydney Swans.

Asked did he intend to call up Kennelly for the National Football League campaign, which starts this Sunday with a home fixture against Donegal, the Kerry manager said this would be an opportune time to run the rule over the player, as the panel was still quite fluid.

“It’s a good time because the way we are at the moment there’s a lot of fellas to come back into panel late – some with injuries and others taking a break. There’ll be fellas coming and going in the panel anyway so we’ll certainly consider bringing him in and having a look at him just to see if he’s up to the pace of it.

“The way it will work is that we’ve been bringing a lot of fellas in and out of training and have tried a lot of fellas in challenge matches and training matches. I’m sure we’ll bring him in and have a look at him in a training match. We’ll know fairly quickly what the state of his fitness is.”

O’Connor is the last manager to call up Kennelly for intercounty duty, as he was manager of the Kerry under-21s earlier this decade. “He was a very good underage player. One summer he was home a few years ago I brought him on in an under-21 All-Ireland semi-final after 20 minutes and he certainly had lost none of his style.”

The match in question was the All-Ireland semi-final against Galway, which the Connacht side won comfortably en route to winning that year’s All-Ireland. Kennelly came into the match in the 23rd minute and completely re-energised the Kerry challenge, being integrally involved in the team’s two goals.

Such was the impact that rumours abounded that the 20-year-old was on the verge of being called up for the senior team’s All-Ireland final against Armagh. The idea was never realised although at the time it was believed that the Kerry management were split on its merits.

Given the county’s agonisingly narrow defeat by Armagh, it wasn’t at the time outlandish to theorise that Kennelly’s presence might have given sufficient cut and penetration to the team to overcome the one-point deficit.

O’Connor says that he met the player before Christmas and was aware that a move home was on the agenda for the player, whose career since winning the 2005 Premiership with the Swans has been badly disrupted by injuries.

“I was up in north Kerry at a league game there before Christmas and I had a brief chat with him there and he suggested that he was considering coming home. He went back to Australia and had a chat with the people there and made up his mind.

“You wouldn’t be counting your chickens because he’s been out of the game a good while. Obviously he’s a great athlete but whether he could get back and adapt to the round ball is another story. But he’s only 28 and clearly has the potential to play at a very high level again.”

Kennelly broke the news of his impending departure in Australia yesterday, citing the injuries as well as his family – late father Tim and brother Noel were All-Ireland winners with the county – as the reasons behind his decision. “It has been on my mind and making this decision is on par with me coming out here (Australia) in the first place. . . it is a risk,” he said.

During this decade Kennelly has also been an outstanding International Rules player, ideally positioned for the game given that, in the words of former Ireland coach John O’Keeffe, he had “the two codes locked into his head” and appeared to have no great difficulty acclimatising to the round ball after a couple of weeks’ preparation each year.

KILDARE (SF v Laois): S McCormack; M Scanlon, D Brennan, H McGrillan; B Flanagan, M Foley, M Conway; D Earley, D Flynn; E Callaghan, R Sweeney, J Kavanagh; E O’Flaherty, W Heffernan, J Doyle.

WEXFORD (SF v Armagh): A Masterson; C Morris, G Murphy, B Malone; G Molloy, D Fogarty, A Doyle; P Colfer, B Doyle; C Deely, S Cullen, C Byrne, C Lyng, PJ Banville, M Forde.

GALWAY (SF v Westmeath): P Doherty; N Coyne, F Hanley, D Reilly; G Bradshaw, D Blake, D Mullahy; B Cullinane, G O’Donnell; P Conroy, P Joyce, J Bergin; C Bane, M Meehan, N Joyce.