Be honest, were any of you ever caught with drink on you in school? In your possession, not actually on board? This corner was, now read on…
A bottle containing poitin was once domiciled in my schoolbag for a few hours. And of course it had to fall out. Before the gaskets in your mind are completely blown, the Mountain Dew wasn’t for drinking. The rare auld stuff had been mixed with warm olive oil.
The man with the magic healing hands and voice of reassuring encouragrment, Mick ‘Sport’ Kelly had given me a drop of his precious and sought after mixture in a Coke bottle the night before at adult football training.
Because I had a physiotherapy appointment immediately after school, I was heading straight for the local Health Centre, hence why it was in my bag. Explaining that to a teacher whilst in 3rd Year was, eh, interesting, however!
Back then, having just acquired a powered wheelchair, if there was something, anything on up in the GAA club, wheels transporting yours truly were there. Seven days of the week if possible.
However, it will be openly admitted that adult football training nights, Tuesday and Thursday, were my absolute favourite weekly activity. Maybe even more so than matches in some cases.
Primarily because those involved with the teams made me feel so welcome and so much a part of everything. That transcended players and mentors. I loved being up there early, between 6.45 and 7pm. Ahead of most of the lads actually.
There were three people I could never beat in the gate though – our legendary groundsman, Aidan Curley, God rest him, Andy McEntee, who would be there kicking frees before or whether anyone was there at all, and ‘Sport’.
He would be in his ‘office’ – the dressing room – getting ready for his ‘customers’ – shaking up the ‘Holy water’, getting the chair ready and arranging what often seemed like a dozen towels. It didn’t matter whether there were six lads or 36, every man that wanted a rub got one. Even former referee Jim Smith used to book a slot whenever he was doing one of our matches The sacred juice never seemed to run out.
But it wasn’t just gleaming legs being dispensed in the healing chair. Calming reassurance and encouragement seemed to be available on tap. Believe me, I’m very much talking from personal experience here. Before any match – but particularly a big one – in my worry-prone mind I’d have come up 100,000 reasons why we wouldn’t win, until the voice of reason would put an arm on my shoulder and make it all sound so simple. Most of the time he was right too.
Then again, few were better placed to judge. A gifted footballer in his playing days, he was right half forward on the Dunboyne team which defeated St Vincent’s of Ardcath in the 1958 Feis Cup Final. Mick was also part of the side that captured the county JFC in 1962, when Donore were overcome in Trim. He was also noted as an outstanding exponent of 7-a-side football. Like high fielding and cocked hay a noble craft sadly almost forgotten.
Did you ever wonder where people got their nicknames? There are people around Dunboyne who some would have genuine difficulty in identifying if asked for by their proper name. Seldom if ever, though, was an acronym more fitting than ‘Sport’.
Mick’s contribution to Dunboyne and Meath GAA teams – he was a key member of Gerry Cooney’s backroom team when Meath reached the All Ireland U-21 FC Final in 1997 – was vast in itself but it was merely a fraction of the man’s sporting prowess. From GAA to athletics to cycling, he was possessed of the longevity and endurance to excel at them all. Indeed, while compiling bits and pieces for what you are reading, somebody pointed out at the beginning of the Covid-19 outbreak, when he couldn’t get out to do his regular pounding of the local pavements, he was spotted on stationary bike in his porch!
However, being honest, before becoming involving with the GAA club myself, it would have been owing to his involvement in athletics that his name first became known to me. Mostly having enquired upon seeing him jogging on the roads so much. I think somewhere along the way I came across a poem entitled The Loneliness Of The Long Distance Runner but ‘Sport’ always referred to it as peaceful solitude. I understood. Let me out into the a field any day.
My dear departed friend did much more than attain succor therefrom, mind you. Quite evidently he was a distance runner of some note. No ordinary man would successfully complete 13 incarnations of the Dublin Marathon. Mind you there have been even more, in Dunboyne alone. Seamus Dunne I doff my cap to you!
‘Sport’ was truly an inspirational figure to everyone fortunate enough to cross his path. If there was to highlight one thing that stood out about him, it was the way in which he took young footballers and athletes (and writers) under his wing. My former classmate Karl Keane, now based in the US, said: “He worked on me when I was no more than a kid, with the same care and attention he gave to a dressing room full of superstars, what a gentleman”.
Given his fondness and adeptness at athletics, it was hardly a surprise that others were motivated by him in that sphere also. Footballer, soccer player, athlete and horseman Noel Lyons among them. He shared the photo below with the caption “Ran some great miles and swapped some great stories with this great man”.
Now, sports like GAA and horse racing often overlap, but in this case, not only were ‘Sport’ and ‘Tonto’ interwined with the two aforementioned disciplines, there was also soccer with Clonee United where they were, for a time at least, masseur and player respectively.
What I honestly had forgotten about, was that Mick was also a horse man (Noel’s nickname tells you what he works at too!) When it was thought about, a recollection was held of hearing that he had worked in Bert Kerr’s Sommerseat Stud in Clonee.
However, there was one feather in this great man’s broad sporting cap that yours truly didn’t hear of until he took his leave of this world earlier this week. If it had been known, one can only imagine the hours of discussions that would’ve been had.
Mick either foaled three-time Cheltenham Gold Cup winner Best Mate himself or was present at the birth of the equine superstar. With either being the case, it’s no wonder the gelding got the name he did. For if he had ‘Sport’ Kelly looking after him, that’s exactly what had, a wonderful, kind, caring friend.
That’s what those of us who were lucky enough to have Michael Kelly in our lives have lost. A man whose passing leaves an enorvous void, most obviously to his family, but also in the history and general life of our town and parish.
Sleep easy my gentle friend, you’ll be a sporting star up there too.
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