James Kelly’s epitaph might read like one of those slogans you see splashed around football club dressing rooms all over the country. “Pain is temporary, class is permanent.”
He experienced the former the first time he pulled on his No. 9 jumper for Geelong in early 2002 when he and a young Cats side were thrown to the Lions, the Brisbane variety, at the Gabba.
He experienced the former the first time he pulled on his No. 9 jumper for Geelong in early 2002 when he and a young Cats side were thrown to the Lions, the Brisbane variety, at the Gabba.
The Lions were coming off a premiership in 2001, were tracking towards another and boasted big, powerful bodies and some household names. Players such as Michael Voss, Alastair Lynch, Nigel Lappin, Justin Leppitsch, Chris Johnson, Marcus Ashcroft, Martin Pike, Chris and Brad Scott, Shaun Hart, Craig McRae, Darryl White were at the peak of their powers and they had three emerging young stars in Jonathan Brown, who didn’t play that game, Simon Black and Luke Power.
The Lions team against Geelong boasted a combined total of 2720 games and an average age of 25 years and 316 days. The Cats, by comparison, had 1380 games’ experience and an average age of 22 years and 325 days.
It was just six rounds into the season and Kelly, the No. 17 pick in the previous year’s draft, was named for his first game.
Making his debut alongside him was Steve Johnson, who was taken later in that draft at No. 24; he was just plain old Steve then, no ‘Stevie J’.
Others in the Cats’ line-up for the trip to the Gabba included Gary Ablett (playing his sixth game), Josh Hunt (ninth), Joel Corey (25th) and Cameron Ling (29th). Before they changed their names from James and Jarad respectively, Jimmy Bartel was playing his sixth game and Max Rooke his fifth.
The result was predictable enough, a 57-point thumping and a harsh reality check for Mark Thompson, then in his third season, and his young Cats.
For Kelly, it was a debut to forget. He says he was shot even before the game started.
“I was very nervous, actually I was a bit of a mess. I kept dropping balls in the warm-up and ‘Bomber’ pulled me out before I kept mucking things up any more,” Kelly recalled this week.
After starting on the bench, he managed just three disposals (“I matched them with three clangers”) and was promptly sent back to the VFL the following week.
“I was really disappointed when I was dropped but I came back a few weeks later and I felt more confident,” he said.
Indeed, Kelly showed the football world that the pain of his debut would be temporary and, after 159 games and two premierships, it’s fair to say the class is permanent.
Read the fully story in the round 15 edition of the AFL Record, available at all grounds.
