All-Ireland SHC final
Clare 3-29 Cork 1-34 (after extra-time)
TONY Kelly hailed his greatest day in hurling after capping a terrific career by captaining Clare to All-Ireland success.
The Banner wouldn’t have won their fifth ever All-Ireland without Kelly as the Ballyea man caught fire just when his team needed him, dragging them to victory.
Kelly finished with 1-4, all from play, and good luck to whoever had the task of trying to pick out his best scores for the highlights reel afterwards. Each of them were inspirational.
The 30-year-old was just a teenager when he captured his first All-Ireland, also at Cork’s expense, back in 2013.
“I suppose from a selfish point of view, this is possibly the best thing I will ever do in hurling,” said Kelly. “There is obviously a bit of luck involved. To be asked to be captain first of all, and then you have to have a team good enough and a panel good enough to win an All-Ireland. But yeah, from a personal point of view it’s the best thing I will ever do in the GAA.”
As much as his scores were all mesmerising, he’ll probably be remembered for his stunning solo goal in the 51st minute, Clare’s third, which came at the end of a slaloming run through the Cork defence.
“Often goals are made by the defender rather than yourself,” he said. “You don’t take the ball and think, ‘I’m going to score a goal here’. You take what is in front of you really so when the defender came, I didn’t want to get blocked down and I had to sidestep him and then another defender came and I had to sidestep again. And once you’re through, you have to have a rattle at a goal. Fortunate enough then that it hit the back of the net.”
More than a decade after that 2013 triumph, Kelly said this one is sweeter for the passing of all that time.
“Eleven years ago we were coming off underage success thinking, ‘Jeez, this is mighty, you turn up and you win or you turn up and you get to finals year in, year out’. When you do that in your first or second year in senior, you think it’s kind of run of the mill.
“The hardship then makes you appreciate it as you get older, definitely. For the seven or eight lads still around from 2013, it’s mighty for them as well, lads who have stuck the course. Like, we’ve been beaten in four Munster finals, got a bit of stick for not backing up that 2013 All-Ireland, even though it’s a different team now. So for the likes of John Conlon, Davy Mc, those types of characters, that makes it extra sweet.”
For all of Kelly’s wizardry, it was a slow burner of a game for him personally. His first score was his 51st minute goal.
“The nature of the game, it was ebbing and flowing, you’re just trying to get on the ball and impact it,” he said. “It felt like we had a lot of wides in the second-half. From the Cusack Stand side, three or four, and we had relinquished a three-point lead in the last seven or eight minutes. So it was more just trying to get on the ball and impact the scoreboard as much as possible.
“We got savage contributions all over. We’ve had enormous contributions from our forwards coming on all year, and we got the same today, but I think the contribution we got from our backs coming on, Darragh Lohan into the full-back line was excellent on Brian Hayes, Cian Galvin came in and was really composed on the ball when everything around you was manic at that stage. He didn’t give the ball away.”
John Conlon, another diehard from the 2013 group, was immense at the centre of Clare’s defence all afternoon.
“He is pretty much the leader of the pack,” said TK. “He’s the elder statesman on the team but he really is an unbelievable guy outside of obviously being a talented hurler and everything like that. His application, drive, willingness to bring young lads together, to bring the older lads together, I would consider him to be on the same level as a Seanie McMahon, Brian Lohan, Colin Lynch.
“In Clare, it’s, like, Lohan, McMahon...and Conlon has the same aura about him. His leadership ability is just second to none. He will go down as one of the great Clare players. He is 35 but he said he is doing another year. He said he is going to play until he is 36. Again, looks after himself incredibly well. No fear of him.”