Eoin Kelly: Babs Keating lost the dressing room

Eoin Kelly insists comments he made during his 2010 All-Ireland winning captain’s acceptance speech were not aimed at former Tipperary manager Babs Keating.

Kelly was dropped by Keating for the 2007 All-Ireland quarter-final against Wexford. In his address on the Hogan Stand steps three years later, he said about Keating’s successor Liam Sheedy: “What can any of us say, guys? He came in when the ship was sinking but my God, is that ship sailing today!”

In his Laochra Gael programme on TG4 next Sunday, Kelly clarifies his remarks: “You don’t want to let your emotions get too carried away but you know how much it means to you and the squad. People said to me afterwards that you were getting a dig in at the previous management team in the speech but I can tell this truthfully, that was not the case.”

Kelly, however, believes Keating lost the backing of players in 2006 when he dismissed Ger O’Grady from the panel for disciplinary reasons after the Munster final defeat to Cork. “A couple of days later — it was well documented — our captain at the time, Redser O’Grady, had been let go from the squad, which as players we would have all been very, very disappointed about.

“I definitely was (disappointed) because he was our captain. I don’t think that did us any favours going into an All-Ireland quarter-final against Waterford and I think from that point on, Babs probably lost the dressing room.”

The speculation that Kelly was unfit for the 2007 quarter-final still rankles with him. “A small bit of controversy came about that I was injured for the Wexford game. ‘Was he injured, was he not injured?’ If you’re injured going into the Wexford game, I wouldn’t be coming on after 20 minutes.

“That was the fourth year in a row we’d been knocked out before an All-Ireland semi-final. You were wondering were we ever going to have success?”

Kelly recalls how the Tipperary dressing room was a place of desolation after the 2009 All-Ireland final defeat to Kilkenny. “I’ve a strong memory of walking into the dressing room and seeing (then coach/selector) Eamon O’Shea crying in the physio’s room. Going back to the team hotel, you’d meet your family and you feel you’ve let them down.

“At a team meeting a couple of months after that, we would have spoken about the hurt of the 2009 All-Ireland final and one or two players would have openly cried at that meeting, saying that meeting their families in the Burlington Hotel afterwards that they just couldn’t live with that and that if we ever got back to that stage again, that it was something you didn’t want to go through ever again.” ·

• Eoin Kelly — Laochra Gael is on TG4 this Sunday at 6.25pm