Kennelly’s dream realised

TADHG KENNELLY was close to tears in Bellaghy six months ago when he made his senior inter-county debut against Derry and the emotion was threatening to get the better of him again yesterday.

Less than a year after calling time on a successful and enriching AFL career with the Sydney Swans, Kennelly had climbed his Irish Everest.

Whatever happens from here on in, he will always be an All-Ireland winner.

Just like his late dad Tim.

“It hasn’t really sunk in,” he said soon after the final whistle.

“I have only really been thinking about my father to tell you the truth. I am a very, very happy man.”

There were times this year when he wondered if he had made the right decision, particularly when Sligo were a converted penalty away from dumping the Kingdom on the championship scrapheap that day in Tralee.

It looked almost as bleak yesterday after the first ten minutes when Colm O’Neill found the net and Cork motored into a five-point lead, but any doubts Kennelly had once harboured had long been exorcised.

“We talked about it before the game, that Cork were going to come at us. Darragh O Sé and Jack said it on numerous occasions throughout the week: ‘We have a plan and we’ll stick to it’.

“No matter what happened throughout the game, whether we went a goal or two goals down, (we’ll stick to the plan). That’s what happened, we went four points down but ended up being two points up at half time.”

Kennelly knows a thing or two about character and commitment having upped sticks and leaving the comforting embrace of Ireland as a teenager for the harsh realities of professional life in Australia.

So, who better to talk about the travails that this Kerry team have had to endure since that first championship outing against Cork in Killarney when the wheels first threatened to come off?

“There is great character in the team. You stick to the plan and you stick to what you know. There is great experience and a great bunch of lads out there. There was an awful lot thrown at them. They were knocked so, so much through the years and they were knocked again this year. To do what we have is absolutely unbelievable.”

As usual, Kennelly hardly stood still for a second once the first whistle was sounded yesterday but, given his years with the Sydney Swans, it was surprising to see his number come up with almost 20 minutes still to play.

“I had spent my money. I wasn’t going to leave anything in the tank. And on a player like Graham Canty, if I had gone into the game thinking I would try and save my legs, Graham would have soaked me up in the first 20 minutes. So, I just played my heart out. I was quite happy that I had done my day’s work and Donncha (Walsh) came on and did his work. We had a bunch of stars that came on and did great.”

You look back on the summer now, on the games against Cork, Longford, Sligo and Antrim, and the sound of the alarm bells ringing around the Kingdom seems utterly incongruous.

Yet, the fact remains that Kerry lived on the edge for long spells this summer but, not for the first time, one of the game’s heavyweights immersed themselves in the purgatory of the back door system before emerging cleansed.

“The qualifiers really brought us on,” said Killian Young. “We had no time to think about the opposition. We had a game nearly every week. As soon as we came to Croke Park for the Dublin game nobody gave us a chance but we expressed ourselves on the day and everything turned out alright. The game was over after 20 minutes.

“It was a tough battle against Meath and we learned a lot from that. There was a lot of breaking ball in the middle third and that was a huge factor again this time. We worked very hard on Cork’s kick-outs. They had been finding that very easy all year, winning a lot of ball in the middle third with very little pressure. We stopped that today.”

The bottom line is that this Kerry team faced up to every question asked of them, fought through dips in form, off-field controversies and the loss of key personnel through injury to claim their 36th All-Ireland.

Like Andy Dufresne in the ‘Shawshank Redemption’, they waded through a river of s*** and come out clean on the other side. In fact, given everything they had endured, is it any surprise that they reacted so well to going five points down so early? “There could have been (panic) but it was very early in the game and the team showed great character in coming back,” said Young. “There was something like an eight point turnaround by half-time after that which was a marvellous turnaround.

“We knew Cork would come back at us again in the second-half. Thankfully, we held them out. There was marvellous character out there. There were leaders on the pitch out there. It was great the way it turned out, after the way the year went. Things were ragged earlier in the year but everything just happened to turn out right. We had no pressure coming into this game. Nobody had given us a chance, they had given Cork the Sam already. It was a great advantage.”