Despite swapping Kildare for Charlton Athletic, Gaelic football was never far from Kevin Feely’s mind.
He is back now, returning home from a dressing room in Charlton where he did not get the same sense of togetherness that he experiences with his club Athy and the Kildare senior footballers.
Feely’s two years as a professional football in England only served to strengthen his love for Gaelic football.
For a 24-year-old, Kildare’s Kevin Feely has quite a story to tell. The Athy native ventured across the waters to pursue his footballing dream with Charlton as a 19-year-old in 2012.
Speaking to Colm Parkinson on The GAA Hour, Feely revealed how, “football was always on my mind, the main reason I came back from England was for football. At the time I put it down to wanting to finish my college degree, the truth of it was I was missing out on playing with Kildare.”
The harsh truths of 16-year-olds moving to England for football https://t.co/vpiYrTd04p
— FootballJOE (@FootballJOE) March 16, 2017
Feely spoke of encountering a culture shock when he first went over to England.
“It is very different, the culture is hugely different. Charlton, there is a lot more money in the dressing room, and more emphasis on it and more emphasis on fashion accessories. There is not a huge emphasis on that in Gaelic dressing rooms.
A drop down to League Two with Newport, where the loyalty and passion was more akin to Gaelic football, suited him much more.
“League Two is more down to earth, more similar to teams I played with at home,” he said. “The less money involved in the game, the more down to earth the dressing rooms are.”
Regarding training and preparation Feely revealed that there is “very little difference in terms of the fitness levels” of a Gaelic footballer and a soccer player.
“[The GAA] are trying to do something that’s not really feasible with the level of professionalism. I don’t know how GAA players manage it.”
The main difference is that of intensity levels in training.
“The [soccer] training would be real low intensity when the games are going on, in football the training intensity rarely drops.”
Feely laments the fact that, “there’s no real time for recovery in the GAA and that’s why there’s such a high injury rate.”
He feels that this is something that the GAA must look at as the player burnout issue is very alive in the GAA today.
Feely has been a key man for Kildare in their impressive league campaign to date, where they are flying high at the top of Division 2.
He believes his side are on an upward curve under Cian O Neill and are “learning from previous mistakes” and are benefitting from not having too many injuries.
All in all, he is happy to be home.
You can listen to Feely’s entire interview with Colm Parkinson below, from 21 minutes onwards.
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