Due to the blight of emigration, Donal Kelly didn't enjoy the most lengthy of careers with Cavan. Nevertheless he did manage to win two Ulster SFC medals and a host of admirers. Kevin Carney reports Donal Kelly played football at the highest level in an age when secure employment was as rare as first round exits for Cavan in the Ulster Senior Football Championship. The Bailieboro Shamrocks and county star from yesteryear loved playing football but, sadly, economic circumstances dictated that he failed to grace the playing fields of Cavan and Ireland for as long as he really ought. Gaels across the length and breadth of Cavan loved to watch Donal's stirring runs and high-fielding when he was at his prime during the mid 'fifties. His was a style which was a forerunner of the type later brought to a wider television audience in the 'seventies and 'eighties by the likes of Brian McEniff (Donegal), Ger Power (Kerry), Liam Currams (Offaly) and Kevin Moran (Dublin). Not surprisingly, the 70-something Shamrocks club stalwart admits that he would have liked to have played the modern style of football. And everyone who saw the retired businessman strut his stuff for Bailieboro and Cavan concur that mixing it with the best around these days would come pretty easy to him. Donal first caught the eye on the local club scene as an effervescent minor and, thereafter, as an attacking half-back on the Cavan minor squad which reached the All-Ireland decider only to lose out to a crack Galway side. Donal acknowledges that he was among a team of starlets during his stint with the under 18 county side with the likes of Gerry Keyes (Cootehill Celtic) and the pride of west Cavan Tom Maguire providing an almost indestructable midfield platform. One wonders was the defeat to Galway avoidable? "I don't know. You'd have to say that they were a better team and proved it on the day. "But you'd wonder how much better we'd have done if the organisation and training had been better. At that time, the players would only meet up on the day of the match. "I remember meeting up with one of the Galway lads who played in the final a few years ago and he told me that the whole team was brought to St. Nathy's College for collective training. "It's hard to think that Galway's better preparation didn't give them an advantage going into the match because we didn't even come together for training before the matches. "I remember our 22 man panel was picked after a trial match in Cootehill on Easter Sunday and, you know, there was probably better players than us in the county at that time who weren't at that trial," Donal recalls. Even before the '52 squad was assembled, Kelly and his peers had shown promise and no little potential twelve months previously. In fact, the tigerish half-back reckons the Class of 1951 was a better, all-round team than its immediate successor. "We beat Fermanagh by something like 35 points in the Ulster semi-final but they objected to one of our players, saying he was a Meathman. "The matter went to the Ulster Council and Central Council but in the meanwhile Fermanagh went onto play Armagh in the Ulster final but were well beaten. "Our appeal was later upheld and we played Armagh for the right to get into the All-Ireland semi-final but lost out by a point in a game we should really have won." Like all others of the same vintage, Donal played Gaelic football at underage level in Cavan when coaching at that grade was non-existent and organised competitions few and far between. However he does recall winning the county under 14 championship title with Bailieboro in 1949 and later teaming up with would-be county minor team-mates Paddy Farrell and Gerry Smith to help the Shamrocks reach the minor final only to lose out to Gowna. "There was very little effort put into organising or promoting underage football in the county back then. There was hardly any club passing any notice of the game at that level. "It wasn't treated seriously and I saw the time when eight fellas from Bailieboro, including my two brothers Bernard and Malachy played with the minors in Kingscourt because nobody really bothered getting things organised at our own club," added the one-time Belcamp College student. Despite the erratic nature of the underage structure in Cavan, Donal's innate skills and burning ambition saw that he consistently caught the eyes of the junior and senior county selectors on his emergence from underage ranks. He played at centre-back on the Cavan junior team in 1953 that lost to Tyrone in the provincial championship and later linked up alongside Jim McDonnell with great effect. Did he find the step up from minor to junior and senior ranks intimidating or difficult? "No, not really. There wasn't an awful lot of difference. "I hadn't any problem coping with the physical side of things and my only feeling at the time was how lucky I was to get a run with the seniors at a time Victor Sherlock and the 'Gunner' Brady were playing. "I never thought I'd get the chance to play alongside them. Fellas of my age would have looked up to those players, Mick Higgins and the like." Donal not along played alongside such luminaries of the game but he collected senior provincial championship medals into the bargain with title triumphs in 1954 and '55. It could have been a hat-trick of blue riband titles in 1956 but for Tyrone, Iggy Jones et al. "I was marking him (Iggy) in the first half in Clones and we'd a great battle. "He was a flyer and very skilful and was always a danger, along with Jim Devlin. "I remember we were one point behind at half-time after playing into a gale force wind. "T.P O'Reilly, who was chairman and team-manager at the time, decided to switch me off Iggy for the second half; something I remember the 'Gunner' didn't agree with at the time. "I had held him (Jones) scoreless in the first half but I wasn't complaining to be taken off him." And, sure enough, the switch backfired on Cavan and the blues - dead certs among the pundits before the match - were beaten by the O'Neill County. It was one of the greatest upsets in Ulster football during that period. The spring-heeled Kelly was a safe pair of hands in every respect and it was thought by those at county board level and also his peers that he would do the Cavan jersey proud for many moons thereafter. Sadly Ireland hovered on the cusp of desolation throughout the 'fifties. While he had his father's draper business to inherit, there was little on the shelves to sell and even less people with the money to purchase goods. Faced with such a bleak situation, the county star headed to England in search of gainful employment and from 1958 to 1970, he was lost to Cavan football. By the time Donal did return to the 'oul sod, he was way past his best. It is said locally in Bailieboro that Cavan football missed Kelly but football in Bailieboro was left like a stool with three legs after his enforced departure across the pond. Emigration was a blight on Ireland's landscape and though there were plenty of fellow Irish exiles in Birmingham, Donal never quit pining for Cavan and Gaelic football. True to form though, he didn't turn his back on Gaelic games and, instead, threw his energy into promoting and developing Gaelic football in his adopted land. Donal actually went onto set up the Erin go Bragh club; a club which is still in existence to this very day. It has been proven over the years that Donal's ploy of recruiting native English boys to play the game at underage level during his time in Birmingham was a master stroke. And the establishment by him of a minor board also helped cement the burgeoning Gaelic games movement there too. Donal and his late wife Angela took great pride in travelling over to Birmingham some years ago as special guests of the Warwickshire GAA Board to join with them for Warwickshire's Silver Jubilee celebrations. "I was honoured by being their guest speaker on the night and we were treated like a lord and a lady," Donal recalls. What a pity though the scourge of emigration prevented Donal from lording it over attackers all over Ireland for more than the few years he managed. Tweet

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