FOR THE BEST part of 25 years, Eoin Kelly has come down his driveway, flicked the indicator left, and turned the car for Thurles.
Dr Morris Park or Semple Stadium. Player or selector. There hasn’t been any call for a sat-nav in all those years of driving on autopilot.
Now, though, the car is pointed in a different direction; right, across the county bounds, and down the road to Waterford.
That drive takes him through Ballyhale territory and Kelly credits its favourite son Henry Shefflin with breaking the mould for former players moving outside their native counties to provincial rivals.
“Henry Shefflin making the move to Galway opened everyone else’s minds,” says the new Waterford selector.
“The game has changed. Gone is the day that you look at a player and think, ‘He was a good hurler, that lad played for the county, sure he’ll be the manager.’
“It’s moved on from that and you need to have a CV now with all of your experience, like if you were going for any job interview.
“Anything is seen now as doable, especially a man of his [Shefflin’s] stature. All the All-Irelands he won with Kilkenny. He probably said he had to go and earn his stripes, as he calls it, see how he gets on, test himself.
“He could have sat back and rested on his laurels but he put himself out there and he’s testing himself. I’d admire him for the move he made, I would.”
Kelly’s Waterford crusade throws in with the fixture that will bring the most local hype, albeit more so when they meet in the heat of summer hurling: a Co-Op Superstores Munster Hurling League game against Tipperary tonight (Fraher Field, 7pm).
Two legends will swap sidelines: Tony Browne and Kelly in Tipperary and Waterford tracksuits. If it jars with traditionalist fans, it doesn’t with Kelly.
“He [Browne] obviously went in when Liam [Cahill] was manager in Waterford, probably built up a good relationship, a good rapport, and when lads build that relationship and rapport up with someone and they feel they can work with them, that’s what you do with a management team.
“It might be something fresh for not just Liam Cahill’s management team but for the Tipp players. Sometimes a guy from a different county might look at guys and how things are done through a different set of eyes.
“It’s interesting but I’m not surprised now if anyone ends up anywhere in the management world because we’ve seen it before.”
How will it feel being involved against Tipperary? Kelly says he’ll be better positioned to answer once he’s been through that emotional wringer but the experience will be lessened by the removal of the maor foirne role which allowed a member of the management team to run onto the field and issue instructions.
“It has changed from that side because the maor foirne is gone so you have one manager here and one manager there and the rest of the management team is back so you’re kind of removed from it.
“There’s no sideline antics anymore. With on-pitch or tunnel scuffles, the GAA really has management teams and players and subs isolated. It’s taken away from the game and it used to be great with the maor foirnes coming in.
“Even from a manager’s side of it giving instructions in, you can imagine Croke Park on All-Ireland semi-final or final day with 82,000 people there, it’s very hard to hear anything and get instructions in so the maor foirne is a loss to managers.”
Managing Tipperary would, of course, interest Kelly if the right time comes down the road. For now, he’ll be campaigning alongside and learning from his old LIT coach Davy Fitzgerald.
“He was over our Fitzgibbon team in college back in 2005. He was manager, I was captain. We always had that respect for each other.
“It’s funny, when you win something prestigious in the hurling world, club level, college level, or inter-county level, you always have that connection with your manager. You’ll often hear people saying it, that they had good times together. Yeah, a good connection there and a good respect for each other.
“When he rang me, I wouldn’t be a hundred miles away from Waterford, it’d be about 40 minutes down the road so geographically it’s not a bad location.
“When you get the call, you’re thinking, ‘If you want to be involved you have to stay involved in the modern game now’ so I said ‘right’ and I chatted it out with him.
“Waterford were and are a team that excited me. I enjoyed them the last couple of years watching them so I said ‘They’re a good bunch of players’. You do your research and they’re a sound bunch of players.
“They’re a team that excite me so you’re just seeing now can you push them onto the next level when you’re involved with them. That’s the objective.”