Kevin Kehily – the legend with the common touch

BY TOM LYONS

I FIRST got to know Kevin Kehily as a teenager way back about 1965. My parents decided to send me to further my secondary school education to Hamilton High, Bandon, after a couple of years in the small secondary school in my native Dunmanway.

Along with a few more Dunmanway lads, I got the bus to Bandon every morning and along the way we picked up Kevin and a few more near the Welcome Inn. Now at that time, Dohenys and Newcestown were staunch, even bitter, rivals on the pitches in West Cork, and as young Dohenys we were taught early to almost hate the newcomers from St John’s parish. But on that bus we soon got to know Kevin and we found ourselves in the same class and became great friends.

Sitting at the same desk, getting up to various mischiefs, both of us mad about football and hurling, we found ourselves vying for a forward position on the school team, most of the players older than us. If there was training after school in the Charlie Hurley Park, we missed the bus home and had to thumb a lift together on the Dunmanway Road. We played a colleges’ game in Dunmanway one day and probably because I had local knowledge of the pitch, I was picked at wing forward and Kevin was a sub. I gave him plenty of stick about that one little thinking that it would be my one and only claim to football fame in later life: being picked before the great Kevin Kehily!

My parents then decided to send me off to Coláiste Iosagáin, Ballyvourney with a view to becoming a primary school teacher while Kevin remained in Hammies. Even though I scored 11 points in a Corn Uí Mhuirí game my football career soon began to slide into oblivion while Kevin marched on to the Cork minors and Cork U21s, winning All-Ireland medals. Soon he was on the Cork senior team, 15 years of magnificent service, heading for stardom. There but for fortune go I, was my thought as I watched his reputation grow but, in truth, I was never in Kevin’s league. I often joked with him that if I had stayed in Hammies, his path to stardom would never have opened up.

Newcestown legend Kevin Kehily won two All-Star football awards.

One of six brothers to play in the young Newcestown club in the 1960s and 70s, even as a teenager Kevin was as tough as nails on the pitch. Never the most stylish of players, he had a fierce pair of hands, a great leap, a short running step and a unique way of kicking the ball. He feared nothing but then that was probably the outcome of some brotherly battles in growing up. All the Kehilys were tough, hard men, men of the soil, well tutored by their father Jer, no mean player in his day, and they all wore the red and amber Newcestown jersey like a badge of honour.

In 1968 I was in the awkward position of shouting for the enemy, the four Kehily brothers – Frank, Norman, Dermot and teenager Kevin – as they starred on the Carbery team that won the division’s first county title since 1937, beating Clon in a replay. Every player on that Carbery team was a Cork star, with Kevin probably the youngest. By then I had started dating a Clonakilty girl, Eileen Crowley, whose brother was on the Clon team and I was caught between two stools, ribbed by Kevin for consorting with the enemy. I shouted for Kevin and Carbery but stayed well away from Clon the night Carbery won the replay. It turned out okay in the end as I ended up marrying her. Kevin also married an Eileen, of the Burns clan. He had a daughter named Ciara, I had a daughter named Ceara. I told him he got the spelling wrong.

On the football front, Kevin went on to win another county with Carbery in 1971 alongside greats like Deccie Barron, Donal Hunt, Tony Murphy, etc. They were great players and Kevin was becoming one of the greatest as he soon won his place on a fine Cork team. How unlucky he was when he missed Cork’s all-Ireland win in 1973 as he had taken a break to study and he was never to win the elusive Celtic Cross senior medal, an honour he would richly have deserved.

That Cork team should have won more than one All-Ireland but the 1976 epics in the new Páirc Uí Chaoimh against Kerry’s emerging young heroes, spelled an end. Cork were to go a barren eight years against Kerry and there, like an unbreakable statue on the edge of the Cork square, year after losing year, was Kevin Kehily. The Diarmuid ‘Rock’ O’Sullivan of the Cork football team. He thrived on those Kerry clashes, fearless and unbending, a real fly in Mick Dwyer’s ointment. He just refused to bend the knee and how we cheered his every clearance from a beleaguered Cork defence. He was rewarded for his heroic performances with two well-deserved All-star awards late on in his career, 1980 and 1982. Unfortunately, Cork lost the mould when he retired.

We cheered him to the hilt in those games, especially his now legendary clashes with the mighty Bomber Liston. You could feel the ground shake when they clashed, where are their likes now?

Honours came his way, maybe not as many as his talent and service deserved. All-Ireland football medals at minor, in 1967, and U21 three years later, three Munster senior medals, a Sigerson Cup with UCD, five Railway Cup medals with Munster footballers.

Once a Newcestown man, always a Newcestown man, his love for his native club always ran deep, even when he settled in Bishopstown. Numerous South West junior medals, especially in hurling, county junior in both codes and captain of the 1971 county-winning intermediate football team. As a PE teacher, he coached many a Newcestown side, as well as guiding his adopted Bishopstown to two county football finals in 2002 and 2004. No mean hurler, he could have worn the red jersey if he took the hurling path instead of the football. He even dared to coach the old enemy Courcey Rovers how to play hurling and his involvement as trainer of the Cork hurling three-in-a-row team, 1976-1978, is well documented. He had so many arrows to his bow. And through it all he remained the same common, honest, nice guy, no airs and graces about Kevin.

No, we won’t paint a picture of a shrinking violet, an angel in white clothing, of Kevin. Far from it. In an era when local games between clubs like Newcestown, Dohenys, Bantry, Bandon, Skibbereen and emerging Castlehaven were full of fire and brimstone, when county players, especially stars like Kevin, had a target on their backs, he knew how to look after himself. Just ask the Bomber Liston. He gave as good as he got, never shirked a challenge, raised the ire of many opposing supporters and his name can be found in some referees’ old notebooks. But that was the GAA back then and you learned to adapt and survive. Kevin survived to give us so many great moments on the field of play, becoming a true legend before he retired from intercounty football in 1984.

We met often at games, always the great chat, always remembering those short, youthful days and friends in Hamilton High. Of course, we drifted our separate ways, that is life, especially in recent years when Kevin battled an illness with the bravery he always showed on the pitch. Star or no star, to me he will always remain the young teenager I befriended on the bus to Hamilton High, always with a twinkle of devilment in his eyes, always proud of his Newcestown heritage, a tough exterior with a heart of gold and a smile to go with it. We are truly devastated at his passing, the loss of part of our youth.

The real loss is to his wife Eileen and children Deirdre, Ciara and Diarmuid, as well as surviving brothers, Dermot, Norman and Michael, and sisters Margaret, Joan and Eileen and all the extended family. To them goes the sympathy of all who thrilled to the daring deeds of a great GAA hero. Ar dheis lámh Dé go raibh a anam dhílis.