Tim Kennelly

Tim Kennelly
Personal information
Irish name Tadhg Mac an Fhailí
Sport Gaelic football
Position Centre-back
Born (1954-07-06)6 July 1954
Listowel, County Kerry, Ireland
Died 6 December 2005(2005-12-06) (aged 51)
Listowel, County Kerry, Ireland
Nickname Horse[1]
Occupation Farmer and publican
Club(s)
Years Club
Listowel Emmets
Club titles
Kerry titles 2
Inter-county(ies)*
Years County Apps (scores)
1974–1984
Kerry 31 (0–01)
Inter-county titles
Munster titles 9
All-Irelands 5
NFL 3
All Stars 2
*Inter County team apps and scores correct as of 21:14, 9 August 2012.

Tim Kennelly (6 July 1954 – 6 December 2005) was an Irish Gaelic footballer. His league and championship career at senior level with the Kerry county team spanned ten years from 1974 to 1984.

Born just outside Listowel, County Kerry, Kennelly played competitive Gaelic football in his youth. He came to prominence with the Listowel Emmets club, winning two divisional junior championship medals as well as a county junior championship medal in 1972. Kennelly was a regular on the Feale Rangers divisional team over a ten-year period, and won two county senior championship medals.

Kennelly made his debut on the inter-county scene at the age of seventeen when he was picked on the Kerry minor team. He had two championship seasons with the minor team, however, he was a Munster runner-up on both occasions. Kennelly subsequently joined the Kerry under-21 team, winning two All-Ireland medals as a substitute in 1973 and on the field of play in 1975. By this stage he had also joined the Kerry senior team, making his debut during the 1974–75 league. Over the course of the next ten years, Kennelly won five All-Ireland medals, beginning with a lone triumph in 1975 before a record-equalling four championships in-a-row from 1978 to 1981. He also won nine Munster medals, three National Football League medals and claimed back-to-back All Stars in 1979 and 1980. He played his last competitive game for Kerry in February 1984, but remained on the panel for the subsequent provincial championship.[2]

After being chosen on the Munster interprovincial team for the first time in 1977, Kennelly was an automatic choice on the team for six successive championships. During that time he won four Railway Cup medals.

Kennelly's two sons also played for Kerry. Noel Kennelly won an All-Ireland medal in 2000 while Tadhg Kennelly claimed a winners' medal in 2009, having earlier become the first Irish person to win an AFL Premiership medal with Sydney Swans.

  1. ^ "Four Great Mick O'Dwyer Stories On His 85th Birthday". Balls.ie. 9 June 2021. On the Monday we were down in Tim Kennelly's pub, well on it, and Horse [Tim Kennelly] beckoned me over and said 'You should be in with Kerry, someone should ring Dwyer about you'.
  2. ^ "GAA mourns sudden loss of Tim Kennelly". Irish Independent. 7 December 2005. Retrieved 9 August 2012.