All for the Cameras?

By Paul Kelly- Exclusive For Gaelic Star. AND SO finally, the soap-opera that has been Tadhg Kennelly’s brief return to the Kerry colours has ended. So many column inches devoted to one man, it has been quite simply ridiculous. The 28-year-old from Listowel effectively managed to ambush the 2009 season. He came home, played for Kerry, won a National League medal, cleaned out Nicholas Murphy, won an All-Ireland medal and an All-Star, launched a book and then went into hiding before returning to a professional contract Down Under.

That’s a lot to pack into 12 months.

Normally people take a ‘year out’ and head for the warmth of Australia but Tadhg did it the other way round. If you were the cynical sort, you could argue that his ‘year out’ was actually a carefully constructed plan to make him even more marketable.

To be honest, it had all been going so well for him until that unfortunate incident with the ‘autobiography’.

Here was a man walking out on a lucrative deal with the Sydney Swans to return home and fulfill his long held ambition of emulating his late father Tim and older brother Noel by winning an All-Ireland medal with the Kingdom.

It was fairytale stuff, perfect material for a Hollywood movie. He returned to the family home, lived over the family run pub, and took up a coaching role with the Kerry county board.

It would have been interesting to see what would have happened had he not managed to reacquaint himself with the round ball but to his credit, he did get up to speed and earned the admiration of his fellow players and the management team.

Injuries to the likes of Kieran Donaghy and Seamus Scanlon helped his cause when it came to making it onto the Championship panel but, given his chance against Dublin in the quarter-final, he made the most of it and nailed down his starting berth for the semi-final and the final.

The media, well, the southern media, were obviously entranced by Kennelly’s romantic decision to follow his ‘heart’ and turn his back on professional sport (The fact that he was able to walk out on the Swans and straight into a post in Kerry never really seemed to come into the equation).

They lauded him. In the year of the 125 Anniversary celebrations here was a professional sportsman drawn back by the particular lure of the GAA.

It was all nonsense of course. There was nothing ‘amateur’ about Kennelly’s return. He is a successful professional sportsman, playing and winning is what he gets paid to do.

His ‘tackle’ on Murphy was a cynical act, a moment of pure professionalism equal to the rash of diving that currently pervades the English Premiership.

Did anyone really believe him when he claimed in the aftermath of Kerry’s victory that he was prepared to commit his future to the green and gold? The whole thing always had the hint of a holiday romance but had he quietly headed off into the sunset, it would all have been washed clean over time.

That was before the book and the subsequent revelations, whether true or false, that his ‘tackle’ on Murphy was premeditated.

Every book needs a ‘hook’ to sell it, just look at the media whirlwind caused by former tennis great Andre Agassi’s admission that he lied about testing positive for crystal meth during his playing days.

That’s not done accidentally. It’s all about creating talking points, causing a stir, generating attention and the bottom line is it’s all about sales.

So all the excuses, apologies and chest beating that followed from Kennelly only served to generate a month of free publicity ahead of the launch. Even the ‘will he’, ‘won’t he’ return to Australia story was played out in the full glare of the media.

If he really had been mortified and horrified by the whole incident he could easily have disowned the book and disassociated himself from the publication but instead, he’s opted to head back ‘Down Under’, not to hide from it, but to promote it.

Clearly Tadhg’s done what he had to do in Ireland. He’s had his 15 minutes of fame, it’s mission accomplished and now he’s off to conquer another market.