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Tony Kelly: 'This is our one chance'

Tony Kelly pictured ahead of the AIB All Ireland Senior Club Final.

Tony Kelly pictured ahead of the AIB All Ireland Senior Club Final.

By Cian O'Connell

Tony Kelly smiles when the question is asked and answers with conviction. Leaving Croke Park after the 2013 All Ireland Hurling Final replay did Kelly expect to wait so long to play in a Championship match at GAA headquarters?

"No, definitely not," Kelly replies. "I suppose coming off the field that day, you probably think we could be back here next year and if we’re not we’ll be back here the year after. 

"I suppose to get here with Ballyea is a bit mental. It’s a bit surreal really and I suppose I think we’re all in acknowledgement that this is our only chance to play in Croke Park with Ballyea. 

"We definitely won’t get back here again, I don’t think anyway. This is it, this is our one chance."

That is what makes this particular Ballyea adventure so thrilling, the fact that they have defied the odds to reach the destination every outfit in the country craves."

The Clare County Championship is especially open so Ballyea have emerged from the county and Munster subsequently maintaining impressive form.

"It’s very competitive," says Kelly. "I think a club like ours, only gets this chance once, once in a lifetime. I think is our chance now to play in Croke Park and hopefully win."

Ballyea, though, have been more or less full strength throughout the campaign which is critical according to Kelly, who is one of several from the club to be part of Clare underage and senior set-ups recently.

Tony Kelly following the AIB All Ireland Senior Club Semi Final win over St Thomas.

Tony Kelly following the AIB All Ireland Senior Club Semi Final win over St Thomas.

"Yeah definitely, there was a crop of five or six of us on the Under 21s, whether we’d be going until September or whatever but I think the big thing this year is, I suppose unfortunately Clare getting knocked out of the football and the hurling - we’ve a lot of footballers playing as well with Clare - the two of them getting knocked out in July last year, gave us a kind of a platform to train as a team the whole way through.

"I think that, I suppose the more you train together, the more you play together, the better off you are and I think that’s the thing with us.

"We finally got 20, 25 lads to the field together instead of getting seven lads training and five or six county lads watching. Even though they’re watching, they’re there and it’s great, for the lads training, we need the county lads to be pushing them as well and improving them."

How have Ballyea developed so much during the past decade? "I think we came with one age group from underage all the way up along.  "I think we won a Féile in 2007, 10 years ago. From that we have Jack Browne, Gearoid O’Connell played, Niall Deasy played, I played, Damien Burke played, Eoghan Donnellan played, Joe Neylon played. I think altogether on the panel, there’s 10 lads from that Féile team are playing.

"So I think we came with one, maybe two crops, the age group before had the likes of Paul Flanagan, so I think we’d maybe two good underage teams. Thankfully we have kept the nucleus of that for the senior team."

Monitoring and matching Sixmilebridge's underage success always mattered to that exciting crop. "My father would have managed us from U12 to U21 and we won a ‘12 A, ‘14 A, beaten in a ‘16 A, minor A, we won an Under 21 A," Kelly explains.

"It would have been us and Sixmilebridge really from that age group. Then Clonlara came with the likes of Tots (Cathal O’Connell), Colm Galvin, so it would have been the three, our age group all the way up along and I think they were the backbone of the Clare minor teams, the Clare Under 21 teams, the likes of them.

"I suppose I’d say on that without Sixmilebridge in Clare, we wouldn’t be here like because I remember training for Under 12, 14, we were going three or four nights a week, playing two challenge matches a weekend. You’d be going to Galway Sunday morning playing the far side of Galway and on the way home, we’d play another one against Gort, all because they were doing the same thing. That was Under 12, 14.

Ballyea and Clare star Tony Kelly.

Ballyea and Clare star Tony Kelly.

"They were doing it at senior level as well and still are. Their underage is phenomenal. Like we met them in the Under 12 A final, 14 A final, 16 A final, minor A final and Under 21 A final. The only final we haven’t met them is the senior final."

Another interesting sub-plot is the fact that Niall Keane, a former Ballyea player, is involved in the Cuala panel. "Yeah, Niall Keane, his brother (Aonghus) will probably see action for us at some stage as well, he’s come on in a good few games for us," Kelly remarks.

"I think he played 10 years senior and I think the furthest he got was a semi-final but other than that he’d have been playing relegation with Ballyea.

"He’d never have thought that Ballyea would have got to Paddy’s Day. He might have thought with the undeage, we might have rattled a County Championship, but he’d never have thought that Ballyea would have got to an All-Ireland and rightly so.

"He’s in Dublin a good few years and he was coming down (to Ballyea). I think with work, it’s very hard to be making it down."

One of the most accomplished hurlers in the land Kelly acknowledges the importance of this game for Ballyea. "Historically our good players would have gone in and played with Clarecastle. Tony Griffin probably put us on the map, representing Clare, winning an All-Star, he kept us senior basically on his own for a good few years.

"We’re doing it for ourselves and for the older lads in the club really because I think they truly understand where Ballyea has come from. We always thought ourselves as being one of the best teams in Clare at U12, we didn’t really care what’s going on at senior level at that age, you don’t.

"Down relegation or being down Intermediate at that age, you don’t really care. But them lads have seen Ballyea coming through junior, intermediate and now senior so for them lads, I think it’ll be extra special. I won three Under 21’s and a senior All-Ireland, but if I was to win Paddy’s Day, it’d be out by far on it’s own achievement wise."