For the love of the game

THE first thing to keep in mind. The need to notch up a score in every game.

Sean Kelly will not get to parade in Croke Park at half-time on All-Ireland day this year with the Kerry silver jubilee crew, all of them his contemporaries.

Kelly never quite made it at county level. He rattles off what he had going for him that nearly got him there. Handy club player, with a handy left foot. Steeped in tradition. Kilcummin the club. St Brendan's the school.

Kerry the kingdom. One uncle, also Sean Kelly, won an All-Ireland with Kerry in 1953. Another uncle, Fr Brian Kelly, trained him.

"I was realistic about it. Competition was stringent at the time, particularly for my position, wing or corner- forward. But I set a target for every game. That was to score each time off play. I was very determined. I was disappointed in myself if I didn't score."

A telling story of Kelly's immersion in the GAA. At the age of 30 he set up a hurling club in Kilcummin, a place with no tradition of a timber industry.

Twelve years later, at 42, he was still togging out for the club in the county championship, his enthusiasm undimmed.

"I enjoyed it immensely," he says of his own playing career. "I would not have changed a thing."

The second thing to keep in mind. The handy left foot.

Sometimes, when the heroes of 25 years ago step forward to wave coyly to Croke Park you struggle to find the athlete that was in the middle-age man that is.

Not so with Kelly. You thought before meeting him that the distinguishing feature would be the beard. But what strikes you about the man who greets you at the Citywest Hotel is that he still carries the whippety build of the wing-forward he was: small, neat, slim, close to his playing weight.

During his 30 years in GAA administration Kelly has forged a reputation for being a consensus-seeker, being realistic, having a practical can-do outlook, being highly approachable. He has a great facility with people, his South Kerry accent merging the colloquial with the odd bit of corporate speak - that Celtic tiger worm phrase "going forward" especially.

The third thing to keep in mind. The realist.

Kelly's election to the presidency of the GAA was unusual in two respects.

It is rare for someone to be elected at the first attempt. And though there were four in the field, he won an impressive 66% of the vote. Maybe part of that, he suggests, could be ascribed to the fact that Kerry had never produced a President since the inception of the organisation.

A backroom operator since his early 20s, Kelly's rise through the organisation has been slow, yet inexorable from East Kerry Board to Kerry Board (where he was chairman for 11 years) to Munster Council and to President.

But for all his reputation as a pragmatist, there's a steely and obdurate side to him that comes to the surface every so often.

"You can not be totally consensual on everything. It's important you bring all your constituency with you. But when the time comes for tough decisions, you make them.

"The point that I would be strong on is to listen to everyone's view and explain my view to them and move on from there."

The harder side to Kelly exploded in the past week with the sponsored hurling controversy. It's clear that his fury is undimmed. We deal with it early in the interview. It's done and dusted. But then he returns to it, out of nothing, not once but twice later on.

First bite.

"I felt it was necessary. It was a new departure. This was something that we had not had before. If it was left unchallenged it would be fraught with danger going forward.

"I have said that no blame rests with the players. It rests with

those who, to use the euphemism, were cute enough to see the opportunity."

Kelly's anger at Paddy Power is still simmering. "I was very conscious of the fact that by opening my mouth at all it was giving them more publicity. But I could not give the impression that we were someway condoning it. The consequences were enormous and it needed to be nipped in the bud."

He rejects the bookmaker company's suggestion that it was over-the-top. "I called it as it was, ambush marketing and piggy-backing on others," he retorts.

Second bite.

WHILE talking about the needs of players, the comments of one of the sponsored hurley players, Seán Óg Ó hAilpín, are clearly playing on his mind.

"There's obviously a communication deficit," he says generally and pauses briefly. "I think some players don't realise that the officials are former players themselves. I'm anxious to have an elected committee of current players. When there's no communication, often players are in a vacuum. They are not aware of the issues or the roots behind decisions."

Was he hurt by Ó hAilpín's shoot-from-the-hip RTE interview, in which he had harsh words for headquarters.

"I was surprised. Some officials were very hurt, if you took the comments at face value. There was an element of shooting from the hip, as you put it, and there was a misunderstanding."

Third bite. Later still, when talking about professionalism.

"I cannot see it. But then there seems to be no real understanding (from some) that we have gone as far as we can go. There's been a pushing out of the boat by some people, fly-by-night operators who essentially exploit players but players do not understand that they are being exploited."

The fourth thing to keep in mind. The handy club player.

Long before his election, Kelly set out his stall for his tenure, for which he has taken a sabbatical from his teaching job at St Brendan's, Killarney.

By 2005, he hopes the northern end of Croke Park will be finished (it's a 30 million project); hurling will be stronger; the slippage of the game in Dublin will have been addressed; the cultural side remains strong; and that the club will remain at the heart of the GAA.

"We need the grassroots level, we need to keep the clubs strong. Clubs need to be number one," he says simply.

Kelly's view that Croke Park should be available to other sporting organisations is hardly a secret. But his approach to changing the status quo is gradualist rather than revolutionary.

"I have to bring people with me. People are loath to change if they are used to having things the way they are. The GAA has not only to be relevant but progressive and modern.

"At the moment we need crowds of 32,000 paying 20 for 20 matches a year for Croke Park to break even. We have had a good year and want bigger crowds going forward.

"The development of the north end will cost 30 million and the hotel (if it goes ahead) will give us an ultra modern stadium. All going well, with the backing of the Central Council, much of this will be achieved by early 2005."

ON the thorny subject of soccer and rugby on the hallowed sod he says: "It's a more difficult one to predict. We will see how the debate goes. There are different views. Will it be a better organisation or a worse organisation if we do it? In my view, it will be better.

"Over the next year or two, we will get a fair indication of which way the wind is blowing. There are some people who oppose it on emotional and ideological grounds. Others have a more practical and patriotic view.

"My view is that a rising tide lifts all boats. There is more interest in sport and more people playing."

The fifth thing to keep in mind. Steeped in tradition.

Sean Kelly is a politician but a peculiar one, an out-and-out GAA politician. His modus operandi is realism identifying the challenge, calling it as he sees it, "going forward" to employ his terminology.

His biggest mistake was a decision he made back in 1991 to get involved in the other political game. He stood in the local elections for Fine Gael but failed to win a seat. He hated the 'howya horse' glad-handling part of it, realised that his own temperament wouldn't be suited for it.

"When I was canvassing this fellow pointed out this blocked drain in his garden and asked what could be done about it. I told him that he should go back into his shed, take out a shovel, and in half an hour it would be cleared.

"That's the kind of aul thing that I would have had to put up with. I knew I wasn't cut out for it."

The first thing he did after failing to win a seat was to go a County Cup game in Rathmore. The emotion he felt as he watched the game was of overwhelming relief. This field, this game, this organisation, he realised, would be his one and only constituency.