Kelly committed to Déise next season
When Fitzgerald appointed Pat Bennett and Paraic Fanning as his selectors for the 2010 season, some observers anticipated friction between Fanning and Kelly.
Fanning was managing Mount Sion when Kelly was dropped for a Munster Club SHC game against Toomevara, and Kelly subsequently transferred from Mount Sion to Passage.
However, yesterday Kelly stressed that there was no question of him not working with his former clubmate: “There’s no question of trouble between myself or Pauric. What happened is in the past and I’ll have no problem working with him for Waterford.
“Paraic is a very good coach and he’ll bring something extra to the whole set-up next season. He trained James Stephens to a Kilkenny county final, so he has a good handle on hurling in Kilkenny and other counties.
“I’m looking forward to next year already and I’ll be making myself available to Waterford as per usual. It’ll be my 10th season playing inter-county hurling and I can’t wait to get back into it.
“The county jersey is more important than any other consideration, and all the other panellists are looking forward to trying to go one better in 2010. We did pretty well this year and were better against Kilkenny in the All-Ireland semi-final than we were in the final the previous year, but we still lost.
“We’ll have a tough assignment the first day out against Clare as we all saw how good their U21s were this year, winning the All-Ireland title, but our own U21s did well to get to the Munster final and might have won it themselves on the night.
“When you take into consideration how well the Waterford minors did as well (winning the Munster title), then you’d hope that some of those players will come through in the next couple of seasons.
“In any case the future looks bright for Waterford, if underage success is anything to go by.”
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