Ciaran Kelly interview

Back Between the sticks


Ciaran Kelly has gone from The Green, Ballinrobe to the Aviva Stadium

Feature
Daniel Carey

FOUR years on, it’s still a decent quiz question. What Mayo goalkeeper scored a hat-trick in an FAI Junior Cup match?
The answer is Ciaran Kelly, who put three past his Carew Park counterpart during Castlebar Celtic’s run to the FAI Junior Cup semi-final in 2006. That campaign ultimately ended in heartbreak against Athenry. But Kelly, who kept goal when Sligo Rovers lost to Sporting Fingal in last year’s FAI Senior Cup final, now finds himself back in the domestic game’s showpiece fixture.
“I can’t wait,” he told The Mayo News last week. “We always hoped we’d be back [in the final] but it’s reality now. If you take the second half of the season, out of 54 points, we’ve got 47, which is league-winning standard. We got off to a slow start, but in July, we got in a few players. We’ve just been playing more mature football this season.”
That maturity brought them victory in the League Cup and a third-place finish in the league, which has seen them qualify for Europe. That this fixture will be the first FAI Cup final in the new Aviva Stadium is just reward for a team who joked that they had ‘peaked a year too soon’ when they made last year’s decider.
It’s been quite a journey for the Annefield, Hollymount native, whose underage soccer was all played outfield. An understudy to David Clarke and Paul Tiernan for Mayo U-21 Gaelic footballers, Kelly was cut from the panel for the championship – “Not playing in goal with Garrymore didn’t really help”, he notes.
“I wanted to play in goal. It’s a position I enjoyed playing in, where I got satisfaction out of. It’s just an area of the pitch that I wanted to play in, and it was Paddy McTigue of Ballinrobe [Town] Soccer Club that got me involved. He rang me up, they were looking for a ’keeper, and within a few months, I was involved with the Mayo Oscar Traynor team.”
His first taste of the League of Ireland came soon after. Leo Tierney, who was involved with the Mayo team, was also working with Don O’Riordan, who was then managing Sligo Rovers. Signed as a second-choice goalkeeper, his “unbelievable” pre-season brought him the top spot, and they were pushing for promotion in his second year before a broken wrist interrupted his season. He did, however, play in a famous cup tie where Rovers beat Shelbourne (who had just faced Deportivo La Coruña in the Champions League) in a Tolka Park replay, and finished the season as the Supporters’ Player of the Year.
He then transferred to Premier Division side Derry City, but the long trek north “got to me”, and he was released by mutual agreement after Stephen Kenny succeeded Gavin Dykes as manager. He signed with Galway United “as first-choice” goalkeeper, but “couldn’t get past Alan Gough” and left halfway through the season. “I just finished up football… I just didn’t really have the appetite,” he says.
Gavin Dykes, by now at Castlebar Celtic, helped him to rediscover that appetite. The smile was back on his face and he was named Player of the Year in Mayo, a rare honour indeed for a goalkeeper. He scored five goals from penalties that season, but missed one in a man-of-the-match display against Athenry. Celtic’s Connacht Cup run ended in a final shoot-out defeat, but there were plenty of reasons to be cheerful, despite a long-running dispute about his eligibility.
Asked about the registration saga now, he says: “What vexed me was it was legit. I had signed the day before [deadline day] ... I had a free pass to go to the Galway Races on the Friday [but] I waited back to sign for Castlebar Celtic!”
Still, Dykes’s prediction that good performance could bring Kelly back to the League of Ireland was realised, and he spent time at Athlone Town. Then he got a call from Gerry Carr, the Sligo Rovers assistant manager, who scored the winning goal in the 1994 FAI Cup final. He met Carr and manager Paul Cook, and was delighted to return to the north-west. Having “regretted” leaving first time around, he “felt there was unfinished business in The Showgrounds”, and so “jumped at the opportunity to get back”.
Last January, he started a coaching academy at home aimed at offering children a chance to “learn and develop skills” in a non-competitive environment. He aims to expand the coaching programme in the New Year, but understandably, that has gone on the back burner in recent weeks.
There’s a cup final to be played.