Kelly relishing return to championship cauldron

The first night back training with Waterford?

He slipped in “without anyone noticing” and got on with it.

“I’m so quiet, sure,” said Eoin Kelly. “And a lot of the lads are there a while. There was no hassle. And no slagging.”

Hard to recall the furore in Waterford when Kelly was dropped from the panel earlier this year. Manager Michael Ryan defended the decision on local radio but Kelly issued a dignified statement to this paper and went away to get himself right.

“I was hoping more than knowing I’d get another crack at it. I had enough to do fitness-wise, but I felt if I got that right that the opportunity might come again.

“Looking at the league games, then, they didn’t go well early on and it was in my mind alright – ‘you could get back in here’. The team had a lot of bad injuries at that stage, and I suppose I felt I might get back.”

Back he came, sitting on the bus to Galway for a crucial league game. When he was sprung from the bench on a sunny afternoon in Salthill, though, he felt the pressure.

“To be honest, against Galway after a minute or two I thought I’d blow a gasket. It was a bit better against Dublin, the fitness was improving all the time. It wasn’t too hard getting back when all was said and done: I came back fresher than in previous years and it all worked out. I haven’t a whole lot of games under my belt, so I’ll only know against Clare how ready I am.”

The difference in speed between club and county hurling is hard to convey accurately, he says.

“The gap between club and inter-county is immense. The speed, the strength of players when you’ve been out of it for a while take a lot of getting used to. I suppose a really good club game might be half the speed of a national league game. But that league game might only be a third of the speed of a really good championship match. It goes up and up. Clare will be hopping, Davy will have them super fit, his teams always are, and it’s going to be very difficult.”

Davy. He brought Waterford to an All-Ireland final, but he also had four years of observing the Déise hurlers up close. Kelly isn’t being drawn on the significance of the Clare manager, though.

“Before the draw was made everyone was saying it’d be Clare-Waterford, and sure enough that’s the way it turned out.

“I suppose that adds a bit of fizz to the thing. Davy knows most of our players very well and he’ll have his homework done as well. We’ll find it very hard because they had a good run in the league and held their own against Kilkenny.”

Kelly echoes selector Ken McGrath on the financial pressure in the southeast: “It’s bad in Waterford, I know it’s tough all over but there have been some very bad blows to Waterford in recent years.

“It’d be great to see the support there on Sunday because I suppose all of Clare will come along to support Davy. The more we get up there the better, because it’s a huge boost to you to have good support, particularly in the closing stages of a championship game if it’s tight.”

And the sabbatical earlier this season? He waves it away like a bad memory.

“The manager and selectors are there to make decisions and the whole thing’s worked out grand in the end. I knew I had to work on my fitness and I did, and then the manager looked at it again.

“Michael [Ryan] is a good manager. It’s his first year but he’s going well, and we’re all looking forward to Sunday now.”