Gaffers (16 page)

Kelly made his Preston North End debut on 28 January 1961 in an FA Cup tie against Swansea Town, and he became first-choice goalkeeper the following season. John O’Neill, who first played with Kelly at Drumcondra and was then part of the transfer deal that took both players to Preston North End, reflects on his time with Kelly: ‘I first got to know Alan
when we were both at Drumcondra. We played in the first team together. I was a defender and, as everyone knows, Alan was a goalkeeper. We actually went to Preston North End at the same time. The transfer came about at the end of the 1958 season, Drumcondra having won the League that year.

‘At the end of the season I went to the club to collect my wages. I spoke to the chairman, and he said to me, “How do you fancy playing in England?” I said that I would like to. The chairman then told me that Spurs and Preston North End were interested. Spurs wanted me on my own, while Preston wanted both me and Alan Kelly. I decided to go to Preston with Alan, as I figured it would be easier to settle in with someone I knew.

‘The done thing in those days was that the chairman would go and talk to your father, so he spoke to my mine and to Alan’s, and the transfer was approved by them. A fee was then agreed with the clubs, and we were told we would get paid a set amount – I can’t actually remember how much – and if we made twenty first-team appearances it would get reviewed, and then again if we played fifty games.

‘For the first twelve months at Preston we actually lodged together, sharing a room. It’s funny, but before that, even though we played together at Drumcondra, we didn’t know each other that well. I was twenty-two and Alan was twenty-one, so there was not much between us, but I lived in Crumlin and Alan lived in Bray, so we trained and played together and then went our separate ways. Even stranger is the fact that we were both apprentices with the same plastering firm, but we never actually worked a job together.

‘When we signed, Cliff Briton was the manager, and I thought he was a good boss, but, sadly, after three years of his
being in charge, the club was relegated and he was sacked. Unfortunately, my own career with Preston North End did not last too long, and in the end I only played about fifty games before I moved on. Later I received an offer from Australia to go over there to work and play.

‘Alan had a hard job when he first arrived at Preston, as Fred Else was the keeper, and he was a club legend and had played for the England B team. In those days the set-up for matches was a bit different. At that time clubs would only take one goalkeeper to away games, so Alan would often be left behind to play with the reserves. But he was very dedicated. He never took a drink, he never smoked and he never stayed out late. He was very professional and determined. And he worked hard at training and eventually grabbed his chance when Fred went to Blackburn.

‘We lived closed to the ground, and in those days you would train between ten and twelve in the morning and between two and four in the afternoon. We always had to get the bus to training, as I was always bloody late getting up. Outside of football we would play snooker and golf and go to dances together. He was a lovely man, and I can’t say a bad word about him. Alan was a very private man, almost shy. He seldom had a lot to say, but he was never rude, and, you know, I never heard him curse.’

Alan remains a huge part of Preston North End’s history. He made a club record 513 appearances, and one of the highlights of his time there was the 1964 FA Cup final defeat by West Ham United. Preston twice led in the game, but a Ronnie Boyce goal in the ninetieth minute denied Kelly a winner’s medal.

Alan was named Preston’s first Player of the Year in 1967–68 and finally got his hands on a medal in English football when he won a Third Division Championship medal in 1970–71 to add to the League winner’s medal and FAI Cup medals he won with Drumcondra.

IRELAND CAREER AND MANAGEMENT

Alan Kelly was already an international goalkeeper by the time he made his Preston North End debut in 1961. In a seventeen-year career, he won the first of forty-seven caps in a friendly against West Germany in 1956 at the tender age of twenty. Having successfully defended against all German attempts on goal in that match, Kelly kept his place on the team for a World Cup qualifying game against England at Wembley. Unfortunately England thrashed Ireland 5–1.

It epitomises the managing policy of the FAI and their committee in that period that after this defeat Kelly was left out of the side for a five-year period, and a string of other goalkeepers were used in Irish games including Tommy Godwin, Jimmy O’Neill and Noel Dwyer. This inconsistency in the selection process did not help the development of the team or individual players, and this lack of direction was proof, if it was needed, that a full-time manager was the only way for the Irish team to successfully develop.

In 1961 Preston were demoted from the First Division and Jimmy Milne was appointed as the new manager of the team. Under Milne’s regime Kelly became the first choice goalkeeper. This consistency at club level saw him finally reach his true potential and saw him regain his place on the Irish team. He
won his third cap in a 3–2 defeat by Austria at Dalymount Park in April 1962 but, despite the loss, managed to keep his place for the next nine games, during which time Ireland reached the European Championship quarter-finals. Despite this he was left out of the squad to play the qualifiers for the 1966 World Cup finals in England.

Towards the end of the 1960s Kelly regained his place on the team and in October 1972 became the first goalkeeper to captain Ireland. Unfortunately that game finished in a 2–1 defeat to the Soviet Union.

Following his forced retirement from football due to a shoulder injury, Kelly joined North End’s coaching staff and was eventually promoted to assistant manager under Nobby Stiles in 1977. In 1980 he briefly managed the Republic of Ireland side, presiding over the team for one match, against Switzerland. The game was a one-sided affair, with Ireland dominating the Swiss. Don Givens and Gerry Daly scored the goals that gave Kelly a 2–0 win.

His assistant manager on the day, Eoin Hand, recalls, ‘When Alan Kelly became manager he got in touch with me. We were good friends from playing together for Ireland and had always got on well. He asked me if I would be his assistant. Alan had actually been Johnny Giles’ assistant [Kelly stood in for Johnny on two occasions, and did not taste defeat in those matches either, as Ireland won both], so all the players knew him well, and he had their respect. However, Alan was still involved with Preston North End, and the club put a bit of pressure on him, I think. He also had a sports business in Preston, and in the end he decided not to take the role full-time and to return to Preston.’

Gerry Peyton, who played under Alan in his only game as Ireland manager, remembers, ‘We beat Switzerland that day. We were missing a lot of big names, but, as it turned out, we won, and Alan Kelly is still the only manager to have a 100 per cent record to this day. As a goalkeeper coach and assistant manager he was very well liked. He introduced some good exercises for the keepers, and he was a legend of the Irish game. For me, he is the best goalkeeper ever to have pulled on an Ireland shirt. There was an awful lot of respect for him within the team.

‘As a goalkeeper coach now myself, I understand more than most that there is a lot of psychology involved in preparing keepers for games. The right word at the right time can really help a keeper, and Alan was very good at that. He would never put you under too much pressure. Another thing about goalkeepers is timing, knowing when to train hard and when to push players. Alan always had good knowledge of our opponents and what we would face.’

Despite returning to North End as a coach, Kelly did not have to wait too long before he got his chance to be a boss, and in 1983 he was appointed manager of the team. His first full season at the club saw them finish sixteenth in Division Three. Following a bad run of results over the Christmas period of the next season, he resigned in February 1985. Kelly’s time at Preston North End had come to an end after almost twenty-seven years of service, but with Alan junior soon to take his position between the posts at Deepdale, the Kelly legacy at the club would continue.

Life away from Preston began with a brief coaching spell with Everton before Kelly made the biggest decision of his career and decided to go to the USA. He spent the remainder of
his life there, beginning his state-side adventure in Washington DC before later moving to Maryland.

In America he continued to coach, spending five seasons with Washington’s DC United, where he helped produce talented goalkeepers such as Mark Simpson, Tom Presthus and Scott Garlick, who all recall Kelly fondly. For Mark Simpson, himself now a coach at DC United, you get a sense that Alan Kelly senior was more than a coach. He was a man who was respected and a good guy to have around. His time spent in America, much like his time spent at Bray and Preston, seems to have left a lasting impression on the people he interacted with, and you get a real sense of who he was from them: ‘Alan was so straightforward and as far away from being a complicated man as I ever met,’ says Simpson. ‘To me he was not just a coach but also a friend. Some of my fondest moments in his company were outside of football. I was thirty years old when I met him, and even though there was a thirty-year age gap between us, we got on really well. Alan would never BS you, and I appreciated that.

‘He was always telling stories – they used to come thick and fast. The funny thing was he used to tell a story and then a month later he would come in and tell the same story again, although it would be just as funny the second time round. If you said anything to him, he would just tell you to go away and continue talking.

‘We used to catch up every now and again at the DC reunions. I met him in 2007 and again in 2008. Sadly he won’t be with us this year, and we will miss him. When we caught up it was like we had never been apart.

‘Alan was very humble, and it almost felt like he did not want people to know about his achievements. I think he is the only Ireland goalkeeper inducted into the Hall of Fame, and he
had a stand named after him at Preston. He was a legend of the game. During training we used to tease him about it. But in a nice way. We would call him “the Legend”.

‘Joking aside, Alan was a massive influence on my career. Not only while I was playing but also since I have become a coach. The game itself might have changed, and still be changing, but the basic concepts of positioning and mental strength remain the same. As a goalkeeping coach he was old school. He would push me, Tom [Presthus] and Scott [Garlick] hard. He was a good motivator and always on your side. His philosophy was for us to do the basic things well, not to drop our heads and to have good starting positions. He helped raise my game and my understanding of it.

‘Alan came to DC United in 1997. The season before we had won the Championship in the first season of Major League Soccer. For me personally it was a Cinderella story. Before I joined DC I had played futsal [indoor soccer] for eight years, which was prior to the advent of the MLS. It was played on converted hockey pitches. Futsal helped me dispel the myth about keepers and their footballing skills. In futsal the keeper is almost like a defender and has to be able to pick a pass, so when the MLS was starting I felt I had an edge over other keepers, and I decided to give it a go. I went on trial with 160 other players all hoping to get drafted for DC. I missed the boat the first time, as I was injured, and in the trial I played for seventy-five minutes but was not picked; I returned to lower league football. However, about ten days later I got my big chance, as the goalkeeper at DC was injured. I was thirty at the time, and this was my big chance. The first season I started on the bench, but I was patient and eventually got my chance.

‘Even though we had won the Championship, there really wasn’t much goalkeeping coaching. For one thing, there was no coach, and we only had two goalkeepers. We trained with the team and our training was mainly six-a-side on big pitches. When Alan joined the team nothing changed at first. He basically observed us and our training. The first major change he introduced was that we did not train with the team any more. We would do our warm-ups and then practise diving and catching crosses. Later on when we joined in the five- and six-a-side games Alan would be behind the goals, whispering advice into our ears.’

‘Everything was geared to preparing us for games and building our concentration,’ says Tom Presthus. ‘The success of DC at that time meant that the main purpose of the goalkeeper in the team was not to keep us in games but to be alert enough to make one or two saves when called upon. One of Alan’s key coaching skills was to help us concentrate for those moments.

‘He had a number of sayings he would call upon during training. For example, “one save and one save only” and “kick the ball off your face”, which basically meant that you were to use any part of your body to make a save, be it your hands, face or, if required, private parts.

‘Alan had a good sense of humour. He was very witty and liked a laugh. I had not seen him for a while – it must have been nearly four years – but when we finally caught up it was like we had never been apart. I can’t imagine anyone would have ever thought ill of him. He had a glass of White Zinfandel, and although it was hard to get old football stories out of him – he left that to others – he sat and talked for hours about things outside of football.

‘He was very loyal to us goalkeepers. If you had a bad game, he would protect you in front of the managers and coaches, but behind closed doors he would tell you how it was and give you his opinions. He exposed your problem to you and would be tough on you, but in front of everyone else he supported you.