GAELIC GAMES:Tipperary's record scorer knows All-Ireland finals are opportunities that must be grasped, writes IAN O'RIORDAN

A YEAR on since his decade of hurling excellence was neatly bookended by All-Ireland titles, and still it’s what happened in between that drives Eoin Kelly. Success, after all, can only be truly measured against failure, and the hurling life of the Mullinahone man has given him a modest appreciation of both.

No one, not least of all Kelly himself, could have conceived that having won his first All-Ireland with Tipperary as a sprightly teenager, in 2001, it would be 2010 before he won his second. Inevitably the first question Kelly was asked after Tipperary beat Kilkenny in last year’s final was how much that painful hunger, that longing for success, was driving him and his team-mates.

Of course we knew the answer already; so when Kelly says he’ll be playing next Sunday’s final as if it’s his last – even though he’s still only 29 – it’s clear that sense of carpe diem is still intact.

“You just don’t know,” says Kelly. “For some of us, especially the senior players, there were nine barren years there, where we didn’t win anything, weren’t successful at all. That’s nine years out of a player’s career. That’s a lot, like. At the start of this year our goal was to get back there, in the final. Now, that you’re back there you realise this All-Ireland could be your last.

“So some people are wondering if we’ll have the same hunger for this year’s final as we did last year, after being beaten in 2009. Or that maybe Kilkenny will have more. But that hunger is still there for us, and thankfully we’re after filtering that through to the younger guys as well, especially the players who came in after winning the minors or under-21. They realise from us saying, ‘look, this doesn’t come around every year’. The opportunity is there again this year, and you want to grab it with both hands.”

Even in the so-called barren years, Kelly remained one of the most prolific forwards in the game. He’s now tallied a Tipperary championship scoring record of 21-348, from 53 games – leaving the old guardians like Nicholas English and Jimmy Doyle in the dust. He’s their top scorer this summer too, hitting 4-22, and like last year, the Tipperary captaincy sits comfortably on his shoulders.

This is the man first named on the Tipperary senior team as a substitute goalkeeper, for the 2000 quarter-final against Galway, yet introduced late on, in the forward line, where he promptly whipped over a point. But if Kelly spent the early days of his career being talked up as the future of Tipperary hurling, he spent the middle part of it looking across the border at Kilkenny, wondering how they’d suddenly gone so far ahead of everyone else.

“Definitely, there would have been a time then, when you stopped believing,” he says. “Maybe we didn’t have the quality of players. Maybe we weren’t as structured or organised as we are now. They’d all be debatable alright. Thankfully, now Tipp, is very well structured, well organised, not only from the players point of view, but backroom team, the county board and all that.

“Kilkenny started coming along, in 2003, when they had the high intensity, and I always remember Brian Cody saying, after they lost to Galway in 2005, that they didn’t win the physical battle that day. So from that day on they became a very physical team, and matched it with hurling as well. Maybe for a couple of years we didn’t realise we have to get up to this physicality. We had to reach that level.”

It was against that backdrop Tipperary lined up for the 2009 final, against a Kilkenny team already regarded as the best of their generation. Yet Tipperary matched them, point for point, shoulder for shoulder, and in the end were unlucky not to win.

So to the 2010 rematch: Kilkenny again heavy favourites, on the brink of hurling history.

“That’s why last year was so important,” says Kelly. “That last step up the rung. I think if we’d lost again last year it definitely would have shattered the belief. There’s a familiarity there this year, our third final in a row. But it means nothing to be going in as champions. 2011 is a different season. Our first goal this year was to win Munster and our second goal was to win the All-Ireland.

“But I wouldn’t say we’re any more confident. Maybe before the Dublin game there was a lot of expectation from us, in Tipperary, especially. But we knew that would be a big challenge. And since then I haven’t met too many supporters talking about an All-Ireland in the last week. Before the Dublin game everyone was talking about it. People realise now we have a massive challenge ahead of us.

There was no guarantee Declan Ryan would prove such a seamless successor to Liam Sheedy, although Kelly never doubted it. But then he’d lined alongside Ryan in 2001 – with then captain, and now coach Tommy Dunne, at midfield, and a 20-year-old Lar Corbett at wing forward.

“The respect was there,” says Kelly. “When you played with Declan Ryan and Tommy Dunne you respected them. When they would walk into a dressing-room they had that presence, and that still hasn’t changed. Declan always let his actions do the talking back then, and even now as a manager he is not afraid to make a decision, so he probably lets his actions do the talking in that way too.

“But the younger players had dealt with Declan and Tommy too, at minor level. We’ve also kept the backroom team like our physical trainer, doctor, dietician, all that. So we had a good familiarity there with them.”

The back injury that briefly threatened his longevity in 2008 is “touch wood, now 100 per cent”.

So, for the third year in succession, a hurling showdown for the ages – although in Kelly’s mind, not necessarily one to define the Tipperary-Kilkenny rivalry.

“As a player, of course it’s where you want to be. You don’t care if it’s four in a row or five in a row. It’s this All-Ireland you’re thinking about.”

So he’ll play it like it was his first or his last.

Eoin Kelly

Position: Right-corner forward (captain)

Age: 29 Club: Mullinahone

Height: 5ft 10in Weight: 13st 12lbs Occupation: Finance Rep, Bank of Ireland

Championship debut: 2000, v Galway

Championship appearances: 53

Championship score: 21-348 (Tipperary record)

Honours: 2 senior All-Ireland hurling; 4 senior Munster; 2 National Hurling League; 2 Munster minor; 2 Munster under-21; 1 All-Ireland Colleges; 1 Tipperary club; Six All Stars; 2001 Young Hurler of the Year