Being Tony Kelly: how Clare’s wizard regained his magic

A scene from another time and place. Tony Griffin was coming towards the end of his playing days, Tony Kelly had barely started. Their club careers met briefly at a roundabout. For years, Griffin knew Kelly as one of the teenagers who haunted the pitch in Ballyea during out-of-training hours. Griffin would see them while he was drilling frees into the other goal, clocking in some overtime. He knew what everybody was saying about Kelly, and he wanted to believe it too.

Then they played together. A match in Sixmilebridge is frozen in Griffin’s memory for a dazzling moment. Kelly was in possession, with his back to goal, tied up in knots by three or four players. Griffin made a run on his outside that was hopeful or speculative or maybe pointless.

“I saw him look at me,” says Griffin, “and he just scooped the ball under his legs, out the back of the crowd that was behind him, and right into my path. I stuck it over and I remember turning around thinking, ‘That fella is different.’

“He sees the game in a way that most people don’t, or won’t ever see it. He doesn’t have to intellectualise it. He’s like Wayne Gretzky [the ice hockey player], he just knows where to be and he knows what to do.”

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Another scene, different place. The 2013 All-Stars tour has landed in Shanghai, and Kelly is sitting in the lobby of the Crown Plaza Hotel, half-creased from the flight, honouring an appointment with reporters, deflecting questions about his brilliance. Kelly is the Hurler of the Year and the Young Hurler of the Year and he is a fortnight short of his 20th birthday.

The fringe of his sandy hair is arranged in a quiff, and everything in his face tells his age. In his answers, though, not a word is out of place: he is smart and engaged and sure-footed. The most momentous year of his young life had dropped from a dizzying height and landed softly, as if he had killed it stone dead with his first touch.

In a sense, that season has never left him. On his sometimes dull days, through the middle of his career, Kelly’s performances were never held accountable to a general average: at the very beginning he had set a personal best against which rolling judgments would be made. He never shirked that.

“He definitely wouldn’t have seen it as a burden anyway,” says Podge Collins, who played with Kelly on Clare teams from minor to senior. “When you were playing with him you wouldn’t be in awe of him, or anything like that. He was so grounded. A humble fella. It was a simple recipe. His skill was undeniable and he put in more time than anyone else.

“He was always very focused on what he wanted to achieve. That went for on and off the field. He didn’t allow distractions. No distractions. He didn’t let them in. He wasn’t wasting his time with other things.”

Being Tony Kelly, though, generated unending expectations. If they were unrealistic that didn’t enter the conversation as a filter. He had done too much to fire everyone’s imagination. The expectations were his creation too.

In 20 championship matches over the last four seasons, he has been terrific most of the time, and mesmerising at other times, and there have been less than a handful of blowouts. But there was a period in his career before that when his performances jerked up and down, like the lines on a cardiograph.

After 2013 he didn’t win another All-Star until 2020; in four of those years he didn’t even appear on the long list of nominees. Nobody cried foul. When Clare lost to Tipperary by a goal in the 2017 All-Ireland quarter-final, Kelly was taken off with three minutes to go. At this remove, it seems ludicrous: why would you substitute your wizard when you needed a bolt of magic? On the day, the decision stood to reason.

He had been a shadow of himself. Between Fitzgibbon Cup and Clare and Ballyea’s remarkable run to the All-Ireland club final, Kelly had been hurling ceaselessly for 18 months. There was bound to be a price.

Gerry O’Connor managed Kelly on Clare teams at minor, U-21 and senior level, for eight years altogether, and knowing Kelly he knew how his mind worked. “I don’t think there was too much expected of Tony, but I would say, after 2013, Tony expected too much of himself,” said O’Connor last year. “Without a shadow of a doubt. He’s so in tune with what’s required that he probably was very frustrated when he wasn’t able to contribute the way he felt he should contribute. That can happen when you try too hard.”

He needed to find a way into games. For every team that Kelly encountered, keeping him out was their first line of defence. It was a ceaseless conflict. Collins reckons that his club, Cratloe, have used five different man-markers against him over the years. When Ballyea reached the All-Ireland club final in 2017, Cuala designated two players to tag him, taking it in turns. In the build-up, Cuala’s analysis team generated a heat map for where Kelly picked up most of his possessions; they concluded that it was just inside his defensive 65.

Because Kelly was so often man-marked, there was a phase in his career when he drifted further and further from the scoring goal, searching for a tunnel into the play. In the later years of Davy Fitzgerald’s Clare management, that seemed to be the approved plan. Did it work? Circumstances were different.

“He went through a phase in his career where he played midfield a lot,” says Colin Ryan, who hurled with Kelly for five seasons, and is an analyst on local radio now. “He was carrying the ball and – call a spade a spade – Clare didn’t have the forwards they have now that you can let the ball into.

“He probably took an awful lot of responsibility for shooting and then, obviously, when he’s shooting from distance, and trying to do all that work, you’re going to have days that go well and days that don’t. You can see his efficiency has improved since he has drifted back into the forward line.”

Along the way Kelly made adjustments in his civilian life. He repeated his Leaving Cert in St Flannan’s – where he teaches now – and enrolled in LIT. After a year he realised he was on the wrong course and transferred to UL, where he came across Brian Lohan for the first time. They won a Fitzgibbon together, eight years ago now, and when Lohan took the Clare job for the 2020 season Kelly’s form spiked, spectacularly.

His performances against Limerick crystalized the change in his output. In 2018 and 2019 he managed just three shots at the target against Limerick from play; in 2020 he scored a staggering 17 points against them, eight from play, equalling the record for an individual score in a championship match set by Eddie Keher in 1972.

In 2022 Kelly scored 29 points against Limerick in two matches, 12 from play. Seven of those points came in the Munster final, mined from just 14 possessions. Limerick were the acid test for everybody. In those years, and in the round-robin game this year, they couldn’t keep him out.

He used to get a bit riled up ... But now, I think, he’s grown into an absolute assassin

—  Podge Collins on Tony Kelly

What changed? Collins believes that he’s fitter and stronger now than ever. Griffin agrees. “I know from seeing him first hand, and from hearing it from my brothers down home,” says Griffin, “that the guy did unbelievable work on his own in the gym during Covid. He was seen leaving the gym at midnight sometimes. Maybe we’re seeing the fruits of that now.

But it’s more than that. “He’s matured mentally, I think,” says Griffin. “He can go out of games now and then come with a vital play. A few years ago that might not have been the case. For all his brilliance there were times when he spent too long out of games. Maybe that was concentration or focus. He’s probably calmer. He used to get a bit riled up – and he still does in club matches, because club means an awful lot to him. But now, I think, he’s grown into an absolute assassin.”

Over the years he was consistently bothered by a complaining ankle. The original injury occurred at the start of 2016, but every so often it would flare up, and by October 2021 he couldn’t postpone surgery any longer. The ligaments were in rags. Kelly described it as a “reconstruction of the ankle” inside and outside. The procedure worked.

Kelly is still their firestarter, but Clare’s threat has more variety now, and more depth. He doesn’t need to be everywhere at once. “He’s conserving his energy a lot better,” says Ryan. “He’s picking and choosing his moments. He’s slipping into pockets [of space] and using the lads around him.”

“Shane O’Donnell playing well is huge for Tony,” says Griffin. “He’s a ball-winner and he’s so intelligent, and that’s what Tony needs – he needs somebody who is partly able to be a playmaker for him.”

Kelly bombed out in the All-Ireland semi-final last year. Four possessions. No score from play. Missed four frees. Ryan is convinced he was carrying an injury. Anyway, Kilkenny snuffed him out. On Sunday, he will sit the same exam. Honours paper.

“Tony has an edge to him,” says Griffin. “I can’t wait to see how he’s going to perform on Sunday.”

Expectations. Always.

TONY KELLY

Competitive Clare Appearances: 115

Total Scoring Record: 29-577 (664)

Scoring Record from play: 20-309 (369)

Scoring Record from placed balls: 9-268 (295) (7-3 pens, 2-246 frees, 0-14 65s, 0-3 sideline)

SHC Appearances: 55

SHC Scoring Record: 14-310 (352), 8-167 (191) from play; 6-143 (161) from placed balls (4-3 pens, 2-130 frees, 0-8 65s, 0-2 sidelines)

NHL Appearances: 48

NHL Scoring Record: 11-243 (276), 8-123 (147) from play); 3-120 (129) from placed balls (3-0 pens, 0-113 frees, 0-6 65s, 0-1 sideline)

Crystal Appearances: 12

Crystal Scoring Record: 4-24 (36) 4-19 (31) from play; 0-5 (5) from placed balls (0-5 frees)

[ Why Clare’s passion for the Munster championship burns like an undying flame ]

TOP SIX CHAMPIONSHIP POINT-SCORERS FROM PLAY

167: Tony Kelly (Clare) in 55

163: Patrick Horgan (Cork) in 75

135: Eddie Keher (Kilkenny) in 50

134: Joe Canning (Galway) in 62

130: Noel McGrath (Tipperary) in 68

125: John Mullane (Waterford) in 46

TONY KELLY’S CHAMPIONSHIP STATS

Appearances: 55

Goals: 14

Points: 310

Goals & Points Combined: 352

Goals from play: 8

Goals from frees 6 (2 frees, 4 penalty)

Points from play: 167

Points from placed balls: 143 (130 frees, 0-8 65s, 3 pens, 2 sidelines)

Scored from play in 53/55, 96%

Scored twice or more from play 42/55, 76%

Scored thrice or more from play, 31/55, 56%

Scored four times or more from play, 22/55, 40%

Statistics by Leo McGough