WHEN YOU GET a hold of Danny Kelly, you imagine the conversation might meander through his time documenting his obsessions of New Order, The Smiths, through to The Stone Roses, all acts that he had side-stage access to as editor of the NME and, later, Q Magazine.
Eventually, you’ll meander back to the initial point of the chat; that he now lives on the lower slopes of Mount Leinster and has, from time to time, mentioned hurling in dispatches as Mount Leinster Rangers prepare for something of a derby against O’Loughlin Gaels in the Leinster club hurling championship.
Maybe a quick query or two about the progress of Big Ange and the progress of his beloved Tottenham Hotspur and his popular Podcast, ‘View From The Lane.’
What you don’t bargain for, is a granular debate where he fleshes out and gives vent to his unabashed hurling snob credentials by insisting there are too many scores in the game and the GAA ‘Need To Do Something About It.’
“If a great hurling story happens, I bore the people of England on my TalkSport radio show. When Mount Leinster Rangers were in the final (2014), every second day I was bringing news of it. Making sure people knew about it,” he says in that familiar voice.
“On ‘The View From The Lane’ this year, I was explaining the importance of the games between Kilkenny and Limerick. How Limerick were likely to wear down a youthful Kilkenny side with their extraordinary skills they have developed over the last three or four years. How there was a passing of the flame from the Kilkenny team to Limerick.
“And I was able to predict to them the exact sequence of events of the game, and that’s how it turned out. Now, that was a bit of luck in my case.
“But, sport is sport, is sport.
“I can’t expect them when I am sitting there in a studio in London, to understand the passion for this thing. When you tell people how many people turn up for an All-Ireland or a provincial final, they can’t get over it.”
Kelly made the move to Ireland in 2018 with his then-partner, now-wife, the journalist Alex Clark.
Once he moved in, family and friends fussed around and got all their stuff moved in, while Danny instead picked out the prime spot in the living room corner to install his vintage jukebox.
Then he put on his first record; Desmond Dekker, ‘Isrealites’, sat down on his mother’s garden furniture and knew he was going to be alright here. His heritage was remarkably similar to that of Shane MacGowan.
“I was one of those kids that had the classic six weeks home over the summer, and I would go back to England then every autumn with an Irish accent,” he says now in his perfect Cockney.
“My people worked with farmers and they kept a small herd of cattle. We were out in the country and had that classic thing where my mum would come back for the whole summer, see her parents.
“And for a kid who was brought up right, slap in the middle of London (Islington), it was an insane thing. The freedom! The fields, the trees, the animals. The fact you could go riding on the back of a tractor and nobody would look sideways at you…”
The playing of hurling wasn’t for him but he often found himself staying on for an extra week in Ireland and off school if the All-Ireland hurling final was on. It felt like a great way to bookend the summer, the FA Cup final kicking it off and the frenzy of a hurling final ushering in the end of summer and return to school.
His father was from the Wexford side of the border and reared the young Danny on stories of the Rackard brothers. The subsequent decline and rise of Kilkenny was, “A matter of tremendous pain for him.”
He adds, “My grandfather was also a Wexford man and he was mad about the hurling and at some stage his son moved to a farm in Kilkenny and the double pain for my grandfather was the decline of Wexford and watching everyone in Kilkenny get very excited about the Cats doing better and better.
“So I was completely aware of it. I went to see hurling matches at Wembley. One of my uncles took me to see them in Wexford and I can’t for the life of me remember who was playing.
“But it was obvious that anyone who likes a team game, a ball game, but hurling in particular… Gaelic football has some attractions, but hurling in particular is an incredible sport.
“Nearly every action, because it involves men tussling and artistic movements with the hurl, the sliotar and the player, it’s all drama. There is no downtime in hurling. It’s fighting or art, the whole time.
“It’s the mixture of incredible combat and beautiful artistry of the moves makes it a unique sport and it’s just wonderful to watch.”
That’s all the Ireland’s Own stuff out of the way. Danny Kelly is a geek. It doesn’t matter if it’s music or sport, he’s going in for the Deep Dive. He can’t help himself.
“Now, if you want the truth, the technology of players getting bigger and stronger, the hurls becoming more suitable to the task, I think we have to be careful not to allow it becoming people scoring frees from 80 yards deciding every game,” he warns.
“There’s a danger of that. We are seeing individuals now running up point totals that might have been the team’s total 25 years ago.
“Everything changes, I get it. But they need to be careful they don’t turn it into a long-range shooting match.”
You wouldn’t expect to bump into him at a Walsh Cup game in Freshford, but he is partial to club action. When it comes to allegiances, he reserves all his devotion for Spurs. He doesn’t want to kiss the badge and instantly make himself enemies.
“I went to Thomastown this summer, a championship game and there was 1,500 – 2,000 people at the game. I mean… the population of the town is 2,000. So that’s like 11 million turning up for a football match in London!
“It was extraordinarily pleasant, watching the game but the really interesting thing for me came after. People were edging away from the ground but the pitch was covered, and I mean covered, with kids, some as young as 3 or 4 with a hurley in their hand, hitting the ball back and forward to each other.
“You could see the next generation of this thing in Kilkenny beginning, kids emulating what they had seen in the game previous.
“In my other local village, Graiguenamanagh, down the hill rather than up the hill, you see boys and girls, early teenage years when they might feel self-conscious about themselves. But every single one of them has a hurley over their shoulder and a helmet on the end of a hurl.
“It’s just deeply, deeply entrenched in the community and that’s what’s lovely about it. Where I come from in Britain, people aren’t as invested or devoted to sport.”
Maybe it comes in different ways. Right now, the Podcast is a dream for Kelly, as he drools about the Spurs under Ange Postecoglou.
“I have to be careful with these words… But it’s like being a hostage for three years, chained to a radiator. And then suddenly you are allowed out. The sun hits your face for the first time. The wind goes through what’s left of your hair…” he chuckles.
“After three years of watching defensive coaches trying to sneak out 1-0 wins, which guaranteed 1-0 defeats, to see a team go for it…
“It’s a breath of fresh air. He will learn that his rigid ideal will be severely tested in the Premier League. There isn’t a single easy game in the Premier League. Generally speaking, any win has to be clawed out and hard-earned and he might need a bit more tactical flexibility.
“But just having attacking football, and a bloke who seems honest and straightforward after the narcissists of Conte and Mourinho, it’s making my heart soar.”
And off he goes. At a club hurling game near you, soon.
