OVER two decades ago, Damian Kelly pulled on the maroon and white, making his senior debut at the age of 16, for Tempo Maguires. On Saturday evening, Kelly, who says the ‘road is soon coming to a close’ on his career, admits he would ‘love’ to win this Saturday’s intermediate final.
While Kelly’s talent as an attacking half-back was unearthed in Tempo, it was in 2004 with Fermanagh that he really came to prominence outside of his own club.
Dom Corrigan brought the Tempo man into the county set-up at the end of his reign in 2003. In 2004, under manager Charlie Mulgrew the team went all the way to an All-Ireland semi-final replay where they lost out to Mayo.
While Kelly’s intercounty career spanned 12 years, bar a few seasons he missed through injury in 2011 and 2014, the most memorable of year’s was 2004 and one which Kelly says he’ll ‘never forget’;
“It was a great year altogether, you couldn’t have written it any better, other than going on and winning the All Ireland. It was a year that, in football terms, I’ll never forget.”
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