Kennelly yearning to answer Kerry call

KERRY have turned to Ballylongford’s Paddy Kelly in a bid to strike the right midfield balance for Sunday’s Munster SFC semi-final against Limerick at the Gaelic Grounds.

But the North Kerry man Kingdom fans believe is the answer to the All-Ireland champions’ centre-field doubts remains 12,000 miles away, pining for his beloved green and gold.

“I think about it every single day,” AFL star Tadhg Kennelly admits. “Sometimes I ask myself - why did I come out here when I want it so bad? But I will go home. I never want to put a date on it, but as far as I’m concerned it could be the end of September. I just know that I will go back and play for Kerry - whether I’m good enough at the time is another story.”

Kennelly admits that if he didn’t have that desire to win an All-Ireland, he would still pack his bags and fly home when the time was right.

“Sydney is a very expensive city and trying to bring up three or four kids here would cost you an arm and a leg,” he laughs. “It’s a great country, but my family and friends are at home and even if the Kerry thing wasn’t there, I’d eventually go home to live.”

The Kerry man has been one of the few shining lights in a roller-coaster for the Swans, but he still feels that areas of his game need improving. “My left side of my body still needs a lot of work,” he says. “I need to take control of the game as well, particularly around my own area. I also need to be more effective with the football when I get it. I suppose it’s treating every ball I get like gold. Sometimes you can get into bad habits and blast it away. Every ball I get I want to make an impact because you don’t get a whole lot of it. You want every possession you get to lead to a goal or a shot at goal.”

Of course, Irish fans down under almost had the intriguing sight of an historic Cork-Kerry clash at the Telstra Dome last week. Despite a seven-minute cameo and a goal for the Carlton Blues a few weeks ago with his first kick in senior pro football, Cork’s Setanta Ó hAilpín has been dropped back to the rookie list by Carlton coach Denis Pagan and missed the defeat by Sydney.

“It’s very hard on him,” Kennelly said. “It’s probably harder to get a game with a struggling team like Carlton because the coach is under so much pressure and trying to get as many senior players back as possible.”

Kennelly watched the Corkman kick five goals for Carlton’s VFL side, the Preston Bullants on TV two weeks ago when he was in Melbourne.

“He’s a big boy; they are playing him full-forward in the ruck and he’s going well,” he said. “He just has to keep persevering. I’ve seen a few games now, he’s moving well and he’s determined. I think that anyone who is driven like that will make it.” Kennelly was only 14 at home in Listowel when it dawned on him that he could play Gaelic football better than most boys his age. The realisation occurred during an U16 county final when his brother, Noel - the star of the Listowel Emmets team - had just left the pitch with a broken thumb.

“I had to come out to midfield to fill in and I began to dominate. I remember thinking to myself that maybe I could be good at this game.”

Whether he leaves this year or four years down the line, Kennelly has already gained the respect of his fellow players and the footie public. And though he wants to do even better in the game, to be a successful Irishman at a strictly Aussie sport is something that obviously makes him proud.

“I was just thinking about it yesterday,” he muses. “I have two properties at 23 years of age and it all came from my Gaelic football background. It’s not from education or anything like that, it’s from working my arse off as a kid and coming out here and playing a new sport in a different country and learning everything from scratch again. When I came over here, no one knew a thing about me, no one cared, and there was no media. I was known as ‘the experiment’. I hated it. I had visions of myself in a test tube or something.

“I think that’s the biggest reward I could have got when I think back. It just shows that if you really work hard, you’ll get places. It’s all about being driven and determined. I didn’t want to go home a failure.”