REAL FEEL FOR IT
Kevin has prospered since GAA comeback
WINNING Leinster titles with Kildare wasn’t a particular dream of Kevin Feely’s. Nor even playing for Kildare, or kicking a football for that matter.
If you’d asked Feely the teenager what way he saw his sporting career panning out, he’d have replied without hesitation that his future lay in England and professional soccer.
That’s where his heart lay and, if that didn’t work out, then he wanted to hurl for Waterford.
The thing is, the soccer did work out, only by the time the 24-yearold realised that it wasn’t actually what he wanted from life, the opportunity to play for Waterford had long passed him by.
Feely’s is a sporting tale less ordinary and one that begins in Tramore as the son of a Waterford Crystal employee.
‘I’m actually from Waterford, I didn’t move to Kildare until I was 16, so I would have been going up to All-Ireland semi-finals and that seeing the Waterford hurlers play,’ explained Feely. ‘I’d be more of a Semple Stadium man myself from going to Munster finals there.
‘I would have played a good bit of hurling. Gaelic football would have been very low down on the priority list when I was growing up.
‘It was always soccer and hurling, they were the two sports I put all my focus into, but hurling isn’t south-Kildare’s strong point so when I moved to Athy that kind of went out the window and the football side of things came into it then.’
A player who only got serious about hurling at 16 wouldn’t stand a chance of ever becoming the vice-captain of his county but football is a little different.
Feely’s early dedication to sport generally gave him the athleticism to pull it off and he attributes the fact that he now takes frees off his right and left feet to the hours of hard work he put into his weaker left side as a soccer player.
By 2012, he was captain of the Kildare Under 21 footballers and it broke his heart to see them go on and win the Leinster title in his absence in 2013.
As much as two thirds of that team could start against Dublin in the Leinster senior final tomorrow.
Feely was in the UK from 2012 to 2015 having been signed on professional terms by Charlton Athletic.
He reckons he erred from the very beginning because he passed up the opportunity of joining Peterbrough, where he stood a better chance of first-team football, in favour of Charlton who had a strong underage reputation.
As things turned out, the Charlton senior boss didn’t fancy him and he ended up playing for Newport County. He made over 20 appearances in the 2014/2015 season but was merely going through the motions to collect a pay packet at the end of each week.
‘I don’t think football is where I want my future to be,’ he told supporters in a statement confirming his departure.
‘Probably the money side of things was why I wasn’t home a year or two earlier,’ said Feely. ‘I remember thinking I’d love to come home, the summer before I actually did. I was thinking, “I’d love to come home but I actually can’t afford to”.
‘Nearly the next year and a half that I spent in England was purely for financial reasons. I was doing it to be able to save enough money so that I could come home and finish my college course.
‘I understand that that’s the completely wrong reason to be playing any sport. I felt at the same time that I had to do it.’
Feely recently completed a degree in Athletic Therapy and Training at DCU and is fully focused on football with Kildare. Hurling is in his rear view mirror though he still keeps a close eye on how his friends on the Waterford team are progressing.
‘The majority of the team now, your Pauric Mahonys, Jake Dillons, Darragh Fives, all the kind of guys that were born in 1992 or 1993, Maurice Shanahan and Philip Mahony, I would have played on development squads with all of them right up until U15, U16 level so it’s been unreal seeing them lads come through and do well,’ said Feely. ‘It was always either professional soccer for me or, if not that, then inter-county hurling for Waterford was definitely the next priority.
‘The way things have turned out, football seems to be my calling.’
Feely’s strong partnership with Tommy Moolick — they claimed four ‘marks’ between in the semifinal win over Meath — has been a feature of Kildare’s run to the Leinster final.
No more than the Waterford hurlers, Croke Park hasn’t been a happy ground for Kildare though and they’ve lost 15 of their last 20 competitive games there.
‘I would say that the games we’ve played in Croke Park have been in front of what seemed like small crowds,’ said Feely.
‘I feel like when the intensity is higher, that’s when we play our best football and hopefully with the bigger crowd for a Leinster final, it’ll bring that bit more extra intensity out of us.’