Waterford shock as new boss Ryan axes Kelly

WATERFORD hurler Eoin Kelly’s inter-county career would appear to be sensationally over after he was informed by new team manager Michael Ryan yesterday that he did not feature in his plans for the 2012 season.

The 29-year-old is widely regarded as one of the most talented and flamboyant players of his generation but the signs were there that the two-time All Star was becoming increasingly marginalised from the Waterford set-up after he was not invited to Ryan’s first meeting with the players last October.

Instead, he was summoned to meet with the management alone at which he was given an individual fitness programme drawn up by new trainer Pat Flanagan and informed he’d undergo a rigorous physical fitness test in December.

Kelly is known to have been upset and demotivated that he had to train in isolation and away from the rest of the sub-groups within the panel and while he duly underwent that test last month, he was yesterday informed in a very brief conversation with Ryan that the results were substandard and an indication that he obviously wasn’t prepared to give the commitment required to the Waterford cause for 2012.

Kelly, however, can look back on a fine career in which he was pivotal in all of the major silverware Waterford secured in a glorious era for the county. He burst onto the scene as a 19-year-old in 2002, winning both an All Star and a Munster medal, the first the county had claimed in 39 years.

He would then go on to score a vital goal in the classic 2004 Munster final in which he secured his second provincial medal. In 2007 he fired over the point that put Waterford ahead in the league final win over Kilkenny while it was his switch to midfield that turned that year’s Munster final against Limerick.

In 2008 he was Waterford’s sole All Star in the year they reached their first All Ireland final since 1963 while in 2010 he scored 1-14 over the two games it took Waterford to see off Cork in that year’s Munster final saga.