Tony Kelly invents new kind of dummy on way to one of his best ever points

Niall McIntyre

So beautiful to watch.

When Tony Kelly opens his lungs, stretches his legs, broadens his shoulders and hurls like he was born to, that’s poetry brought to life.

It’s poetry in its most beautiful motion.

Every sprightly step he takes bounds into the next one, every dummy he makes brushes a defender away and creates yards for himself, and when this man finds space, the sliotar is already sailing high and over the bar.

And Tony Kelly will rarely just score one. Because as soon as he gets one, the head rises, the shackles are left behind him and he takes off galloping like a gazelle down the field in search of another.

It doesn’t always work out like that.

He takes a while to get into games at times and often he can cut a peripheral figure. Opposition teams will always go out with a plan to try to nullify a man like Tony Kelly.

They’ll put their best man-marker on him and it won’t even matter if that man doesn’t puck a ball all day, so long as Tony Kelly doesn’t get going either.

But when it does work out, and Tony Kelly bursts onto breaking balls before burying them miles over the bar and over the net, there are few better sights in the game of hurling.

Kelly has been on form for Ballyea this campaign. A couple of weeks ago he scored 1-11 from play against Cratloe when he enjoyed just another one of those days.

Though he didn’t truly burst into life this time around, he still did enough to earn TG4’s laoch na himeartha award.

Inagh-Kilnamona were physical in the quarter final on Sunday and they were out to put it up to men like Tony Kelly. Jason McCarthy was throwing his weight around and David Fitzgerald was too.

But the game opened up in the second half and Tony Kelly came to glorious life.

He ended his day with three white flags, the second of which was the 2013 Hurler of the Year at his free-flowing best.

The ball hopped his way and he took it in his stride. He left a few green an yellow men for dead, before Jason McCarthy, of Ireland’s Fittest Family fame, lined up to scare him off.

Kelly stayed going and he looked like he was about to bring the ball into contact, right until the very last second.

Now he would have got the shoulder of a lifetime into the chest had he held onto this ball.

Instead of going for the dummy sidestep or the fake handpass, neither of which would have worked out on this occasion, he improvised brilliantly to just flick the ball over the onrushing McCarthy before dodging him and collecting it on the other side.

It was like the most basic soccer dribbling move of all where you knock it past the man in front of you and run after it.