Kennelly primed to fulfil dream

SEVENTY minutes away from fulfilling a lifelong dream.

Throughout his sojourn with the Sydney Swans in the AFL Tadhg Kennelly always maintained he yearned to follow in a family tradition of claiming an All-Ireland senior football medal with Kerry.

This season Kennelly finally returned home and went about the business of trying to secure what he wanted. Yesterday the Listowel Emmett’s man clipped over two points to contribute to Kerry’s gritty success over Meath in the All-Ireland semi-final. It’s been a dramatic route to this point and now only Cork on September 20 are obstructing his path to that coveted Celtic Cross.

“It’s fantastic to be in the final”, beamed Kennelly afterwards. “It probably hasn’t set in yet, I’m very tired after that. But it’s great, I put so much into coming home, and it’s been a success either way already, whether we win or lose.”

Meath had given Kerry a semi-final battle – in contrast to the quarter-final cakewalk they enjoyed against Dublin – as the adverse weather conditions contributed to a low-scoring and laborious victory.

“I suppose in the Dublin game we got everything our way”, remarked Kennelly. “Going into this game, we knew it was going to be physical, especially with the conditions as well. With a greasy ball it wasn’t going to be easy football, but we knew if we kept going, we had the footballers and the physical players out there to match them.

“We knew we’d break them, and I suppose we were lucky in a way that we got a goal at the start of the second-half. But we changed our game plan a bit and it worked in the second half. It wasn’t a day for putting in nice, special ball like we did against Dublin. It was great to play the way we played against Dublin but we got everything our own way. Playing a physical game in wet conditions showed we can play both ways.”

The poor surface hampered both sides’ efforts to construct free-flowing moves. Players regularly lost their footing, the ball bounced unpredictably and the players struggled to adapt in the early stages.

Yet Kennelly was adamant that the pitch was not a huge impediment.

“It definitely played better against Dublin but there was no wet weather that day. As players get tired, you lose your footing, your legs are fatigued. People say, “Well, the pitch isn’t good enough”, but when players get fatigued and get tired, they start losing their sharpness and they get lazy on their feet. That’s why you got a lot of players in the last 20 minutes of games slipping over. But personally it was fine for me.”