Kieran Shannon: Tony Kelly has legitimate claim to be called best ever

Munster GAA Senior Hurling Championship Round 3, Cusack Park, Ennis, Clare 15/5/2022 Clare vs Limerick Clare's Tony Kelly makes a break Mandatory Credit ©INPHO/Tom Maher

For a league that plays a game that at its most beautiful is the quintessential team sport, the NBA, or at least its discourse, is obsessed with the individual.

Once the Golden State Warriors last week won their fourth championship in eight seasons, almost every ensuing talking point revolved around the true extent of Stephen Curry’s greatness and where this latest ring places him in the all-time pantheon.

That he is the greatest shooter ever has long ceased to be an opinion and become an undisputed, established fact, but these playoffs and especially these finals have called for a further re-evaluation of just how special a player he is.

Bill Simmons is about as nerdish and as authoritative as anyone when it comes to such lists; in fact his 700-page tome, The Book of Basketball, is predominantly taken up with ranking players and teams. At the start of this season he had Curry placed in the mid-teens of all-time greats. 

But now that he has a fourth ring on his fingers, and just as crucially a Finals MVP in his other hand, Simmons believes Curry has broken that top-10 ceiling, powering past other icons such as Moses Malone, Jerry West, Hakeem Olajuwon, Shaquille O’Neal and one-time sidekick Kevin Durant. Kobe Bryant in ninth is now in play.

Charles Barkley has said that while it pains him to admit it, Curry has now surpassed his contemporary Isaiah Thomas as the second-greatest point guard of all-time and the best small man ever (small, in the NBA, being anyone 6’3 or under). 

Curry’s own teammate Andre Iguodala went so far as to say Curry now should be recognised as the best point-guard ever, the inference being that his greatness now outshines even Earvin ‘Magic’ Johnson’s.

For most that is a stretch, bordering on heresy, but the debate has started. And such debates never stop on Stateside. Almost every day on every sports talk show you have such conversations, just like you have them in almost every barber shop and bar. Who is your GOAT – Jordan or LeBron? Who joins them on your Mount Rushmore? Who do you have in your top 10?

You can hardly say we’re averse to coming up with drawing up our own lists and dream teams on this side of the Atlantic. The GAA All Stars are much more hotly-debated and valued than any Premier League best XI. For awhile there every GAA book had to include the subject’s best-ever XV. 

There’s barely a county, paper or media organisation that hasn’t ran a team or athlete of the decade or millennium at some point. Off the Ball during the pandemic even came up with a sporting Mount Rushmore for every county. It was harmless, indeed stimulating craic.

When it comes to the GOAT conversation in GAA though we hardly have any now.

There are any numerous, multiple, reasons for this, and not just because we don’t want to be prisoners of the moment or accused of recency bias.

With 15 instead of five players comprising a team, an individual talent hardly carries the same weight or responsibility as it would in a sport like basketball, or even soccer. The load, the spotlight, the resultant acclaim or blame, is so much less.

And all GAA players aren’t quite as obliged to score as the best basketball players are. Their individual stats aren’t as readily or as easily recorded or comparable. You can’t compare a full-back like Brian Lohan with an Eoin Kelly the way you can still compare a 7’2 centre like Wilt Chamberlain to a 6’2 guard like Curry: either way you want them taking the shot, not a task you’d assign to a Lohan.

But it’s more to do that in hurling the list of all-time greats is both almost infinite – where to place a Ken McGrath, a John Leahy, a Charlie McCarthy, Tommy Walsh – and very short. There’s been so little GOAT debate because for so long it wasn’t a debate – it was simply, undisputedly Ring.

Of course there have been others in his orbit. In Wexford they’ll make a case for Rackard as the GOAT. For a long time Mick Mackey had a case, and was certainly almost a unanimous member of the sport’s Mount Rushmore. And several Kilkenny players have had their names touted in such discussions. 

A couple of years either side of the millennium DJ Carey was championed as the best player post-Ring, at one stage even comparable to Ring even if his detractors would have picked Eddie Keher over him. And then as the Cody winning machine continued post-DJ, it became acceptable to suggest that not only had Henry Shefflin surpassed DJ but that he was approaching, and possibly even eclipsing, Ring. It was no longer heretical. It was credible.

And with that the debate seemed to start and end: it was a two-man thing.

But the past few months, following on from the past few years, this column can hardly be alone in having the thought: has anyone really played hurling better than Tony Kelly now routinely does?

Last year a current player made the case for another 21st century sensation. It was the day after Joe Canning had retired and a contemporary of Canning’s told reporters while he was picking up a player of the month award, “In my opinion, he [Canning] is the best hurler to ever play. Just from a sheer hurling standpoint, he could do absolutely everything. Great skill, great size, great athleticism. He had everything.

“I know he probably hasn’t had as many All Irelands won as some of the Kilkenny lads, or some of the Cork lads, but he was an absolute joy to watch. And in my opinion, the best hurler that’s ever played. I don’t think there’ll be another as good as him for a long time, in terms of anything he could do. High ball. Low ball. Frees. Line balls. From play. Everything.” 

As it happens, that player speaking about Canning and picking up that player of the month award was Tony Kelly himself. And when you read those quotes back, they could just as easily apply to himself.

He can do absolutely everything. High ball. Low ball – or even bounce off the ground like he did for a score last Saturday in Thurles. Frees. Line balls – like that one to level the Munster final. And from play – has there ever been a non-inside line player – though he can play in there too – who has scored so liberally, so highly from play?

Maybe his issue is a bit like Canning’s. He hasn’t won as many All Irelands as the Kilkenny lads or the Cork lads or indeed Tipp lads; like Canning, he has just the one at senior. His talent, his array of skills, may be as good as anyone who has ever played the sport but his resume, his record, is too skimpy for now. 

Whatever he goes on to do, being the GOAT may be beyond him, but being the BOAT – the Best, as opposed to Greatest, Of All Time – certainly from outside the Big Three traditional counties, is not.

TJ Reid has the All Irelands, even if there’s a case that he won the first few with Kilkenny as opposed to how he won the last couple for Kilkenny. And there’s an argument to be made that his best five years equal or surpass anyone’s best five years, including the possible GOAT, his very own clubman, Henry Shefflin.

Next month either Reid or Kelly will contest an All Ireland final. It’ll be a fitting stage and reward for such greatness, and when it comes round, let the torrent of plaudits and debates ensue.