Kielt recalls glory days of Derry

For ten years James Kielt was involved in some of the most exciting days playing for Derry.

He was there when they came

agonisingly close to winning an All-Ireland minor title in 2007. He played in their only Ulster final in the past 19 years in 2011. And he can even boast at having been courted by AFL teams.

What he misses most about his time as a player is the excitement of the big days at the big venues.

“There were plenty of high points. Playing in Croke Park, playing in Celtic Park. Every player who retires will tell you that they miss the summer days when they got the boots on and playing on those days.

“We didn’t win too much. We won a division two league title, and got beat in a division one final by Kerry.

“I would love to be siting here with Ulster and All-Ireland championships but experiences are important too.”

Kielt has run out onto Croke Park when the crowds were roaring, when he was a minor.

And he’s played at a packed Clones on Ulster final day.

These are experiences are his prized possessions.

“I would always be a man that said I would prefer to play at Athletic Grounds in Armagh or Healy Park in Omagh and have them grounds full. They are fantastic. The crowd is on top of you and there is great noise, and a great buzz. When you are on the pitch the noise can be deafening. You could be roaring at a person ten yards away but they won’t hear you. That gives you a great buzz.

“Most people who have played will tell you that that buzz of running out in front of big crowds, and getting a ball and kicking it over the bar is what you always dreamed of.”

The county may not have won muh back then, but their form has certainly dipped since those heady days.

Derry’s footballers are currently bidding to get back up to playing division two.

When Kielt was playing, Derry were competing for Division One titles.

They could use a forward like him who could take the big score. But on the wrong side of 30, Kielt said that it is unlikely that he will return to help the Oak Leaf cause.

“It’s unlikely that I will be back. The longer that it (absence from county football) goes on, the harder it is to go back. But I would never say that I had retired. Once you say you have retired then it is harder to go back.”

He said the reasons why he can’t go back are many.

“It’s not just the time commitments.

“We have been building a house for the past two years. We have a wee’un, and another on the way. It’s hard enough to get time for all that, never mind anything else.

“I told Damian (McErlain) and Killian (Conlan) a year and a half ago after the 2018 season when they had one on one meetings. I told them I had got married and had a baby on the way. I said that the amount of games you would be playing you couldn’t do it unless you were 100 per cent. It wouldn’t be fair on them or on any other players. I left it at that, and was pulling the pin, though that might change.”

Kielt explained that the pressures on players have not come about over night.

He says that it’s unlikely that players could be married and have children and still play, such are the demands on balance of home work life.

“That’s the way the game is at the moment. It really is a young, single man’s game.

“Mark Lynch was still playing there recently and I don’t know how he did it. I don’t know how he did it with a family, going straight from work to training. Getting home at ten you would never see the wee’uns. It’s hard on everybody, on the wee’uns and on the wife. He stuck at it for a couple of years, and I don’t know how he did it.

“But there is probably not too many who are doing it now.

“It’s been a young man’s game for a long time with the amount of training that you have to do you don’t have much of a life outside of it.

“The work that you do outside of the team is what sets you apart.”

And it got to the point where he wasn’t able to do that.

However, Kielt wasn’t entirely frustrated by the situation. He said that the demands on players had a purpose.

“For teams who aspire to get to Dublin’s level you have to emulate them in what they are doing, and do even more.

“But that’s not nice as it restricts players.”

He said that there is no way to stop the demands upon players.

“What do you do? Say to them that they are only allowed to train three times a week?

“There is always going to be ways to get around it, loopholes. As long as boys want to do it then it is going to happen.”

Kielt first tasted adult football when he was a teenager in the early 2000s, and played on the Derry minor team that reached the All-Ireland final in 2007. He broke onto the county team in 2009.

He said the game has changed a lot since then.

“Ten years ago half the boys wouldn’t have seen a gym. Whereas now it’s unheard of for boys not to be in the gym.

“Most clubs have good gyms now. And you would have guys who are 16 or 17 who are going to the gym pretty regularly.

“I started playing county football in 2009 and we had a man from Jordanstown. We were tested at the start of the year, then we had a bit of a program, then we were tested one other time in the year. It wasn’t vitally important. I mind just training on pitch, which should be what the game is about.

“I agree that some boys need it early in their career. Some players who are lighter need to build to get ready for football.

“Ultimately the game is about running and kicking and catching a football. I would much rather a man who can kick a ball over from 40 yards than a boy who can bench press 150.”

He said that a certain level of fitness is important because teams like Kerry and Dublin are doing it. Those teams have put a premium on fitness and in order for the teams beneath them to compete, they must adopt similar preparations.

Kielt said that at the start of his playing career, training plans were rudimentary, by the end of his career they were built into training, and taken very seriously.

“To be fair, most of the boys are elite athletes anyway. They were going to do it even if they weren’t playing. Relatively speaking I would say that boys enjoy going to the gym.”

He said that club level is different, as they aren’t always as committed as county players would be.

Kielt had no problem with commitment in the early days. Playing for Derry was his dream.

“I was lucky enough to grow up in the 90s when Derry had a strong team. They were always pushing for Ulster Championships and playing in Croke Park fairly regularly.”

He got a taste of Croke Park early in his career when he captained the Derry minor team to the All-Ireland final in 2007.

“That year had a very positive effect.

“We lost the final and that was hard to take, and even today when you think about it, it’s still hard to take. It was one we threw away, unlike the Derry team that lost to Kerry a few years ago. They were that strong that even if Derry had played to their absolute max they were still going to get beat.

“In our case (in 2007) the game should have been over in ten minutes. They got a sucker punch of a goal near the end. We definitely should have won that game. That’s hard to take, but you have to live with that.

“But certainly that whole season was a great journey. We got to the Ulster final. We got beat by Tyrone, but then beat Cork in Croke Park. That Cork team was the best team we played that year. That was a great day. We fluked that result. That was the day that Derry played Dublin in the seniors. That was a sell out. Then in the semi-final and that was a sell out because Dublin were playing Kerry. So we were playing in front of three big crowds on three days at Croke Park. And the semi-final replay was in Navan and that was a great day.

“It was a great journey to be on.”

Kielt had his own dalliance with the AFL in 2008, which came to his mind recently.

“I was thinking about that when the whole Cathal McShane thing was going on.

“I had been out with a couple of clubs around Christmas time and I was considering it. I was on the Derry panel, and realised that I wasn’t as interested as I had thought.

“It sort of waned. I went out to a few trial days down South but it never came to anything.”

In the end Kielt took a pragmatic decision.

“It was too big a risk. I was doing dentistry course at that time and I was on the Derry senior county panel. To turn around and lose all that to start a career that, on the laws of probability wasn’t going to work, didn’t make sense. Most boys who go out there, it doesn’t work. So I weighed it up and decided that I wasn’t interested.”

He did not say that he is entirely at peace with the decision. But in truth it is only curiosity that causes him to think about those days ten years ago.

“There are ifs and buts. There are thoughts that if I had have went out, and it worked, it would have been nice.

“But I am lucky enough here. I have a good job, and I am happily married with a child and another on the way. I’ve no regrets. I could have went but you never know how it would have worked.”

What did work, was his experience with Derry.

At the same time that he was being courted by Australian teams, Kielt was also taking those first exciting steps with Derry. It seems that the excitement of playing for the Oak Leafs may have been the reason that he stuck to these shores.

“At that stage you had Sean Marty Lockhart, Kevin McCloy, Paddy Bradley. All those boys you watched as a fan for years. Then you were sitting beside them on the same panel. It was the pinnacle.”

Kielt had come into the team off the back of the success of 2007 so he was entitled to believe that the group of young players coming into the squad could help Derry achieve success.

Kielt was a free taker for his club and for the Derry minors.

Now that he was on the county senior team, there was the expectation that he would take over the scoring duties. He says he knew how to deal with that expectation.

“I’d always taken frees. You can’t think about the pressure as that is when it is more likely to get to you. Any of the top free takers will tell you to block out the crowd. You just think that you are hitting it out at Kilrea in front of nobody. That’s how it worked.

“My dad always said that taking the frees off the ground is more accurate. And if I was advising anyone to take frees then I would tell them to take them off the ground as they are more accurate.

“If you look at Dean Rock, when he has a big free he will take it off the ground.

“But I always felt more comfortable taking the frees out of my hands.”

When he was very young Kielt, like so many other young lads from Derry, took inspiration from Anthony Tohill, the great midfielder.

Kielt was a very similar player to Tohill. He was a big, strong player, who was a great fielder but also did the scoring.

His main coach in those early days was Martin McWilliams.

His father Liam, coached James’s older brother Charlie’s age group, though James appeared on those teams as he was big for his age.

James’s main coach coming up through the Kilrea ranks was McWilliams.

He says coaches were very important.

“If I talk to any young players I always say ‘listen to your coaches. Ultimately, they are there to try to develop you as a footballer and as a person.’

“They are like teachers.

“Coaches have a lot to do with it, but a lot of it comes from home as well, from your parents. I always loved football. We had a pitch out the back and I would have always been there. You learn a lot of football when you are by yourself.

“You can always tell the boys who are going to be decent at football as they were the ones that never have a football out of their hands. They are the boys who are more likely to make it.”

He said that the ones who make it are those who do extra work. The ones who will leave the training ground and go off and train more.

When Kielt joined the Derry team, it was a squad that had came close to reaching All-Ireland finals in 2004 and 2007. Though Ulster titles and even finals seemed like longshots as Tyrone and Armagh were dominating.

“Derry had a very strong. That team of the 2000s was very strong, and a lot of them were still playing when I came in in 2009. They were close to an Ulster Championship. I felt that we could give the Ulster Championship a rattle.”

Kielt was right, because two years later, Derry found themselves in the Ulster final, facing down Donegal.

That was John Brennan’s first year of his two year tenure, as his unique, no-nonsense style brought immediate returns, against the odds.

“We were unlucky that year as Paddy Bradley did the cruciate in April of that year, and he was our main scorer.

“Then Skinner did his cruciate the week before the Ulster final, and he was flying.

“Had Skinner been playing would we have beat Donegal? No one will know.”

The manager was John Brennan, who got the job on the back of his tremendous success at club level utilsing old-school fire and brimstone motivation techniques.

“John Brennan was chalk and cheese compared to any manager that I have had.

“Anyone who has been managed by John will tell you that he is fairly old school. He wasn’t a man for the tactics board out. But he was good to play for. He let you express yourself. You had to work hard and you daren’t make any mistakes or you’d be sitting on the sideline before you knew it. He was great to play for because of that. Players had great respect for him because of what he had won.”

In the Ulster final, Derry met Jim McGuinness’s Donegal team, the first incarnation of his defensive, counterattacking system which would go on to cause uproar in their game against Dublin.

Kielt didn’t think their system was particularly remarkable.

“I wouldn’t say there were any more defensive than other teams. It is rare that you get three or four forwards up front and three or four defenders marking them and nothing else.

“Generally every team will have a defensive structure. Certain teams you know will play 14 men behind the ball against you. It can be fairly frustrating and it would put you off.”

The game was close for a period, but once Donegal went in front, Derry couldn’t close the gap.

“Once teams like that get a two or three point lead they are cute enough not to concede a goal. We could have had a penalty at the end, but it wasn’t given. The goal (for Donegal) that was the decisive score. That gave them the cushion that they needed.”

Kielt’s memories of the game stretch to the key moments such as that goal, and also that he was marking the All-star Kevin Cassidy.

He prefers to remember the lead up to the game.

“The build up was fantastic at the time because John Brennan was manager. We had a great victory against Armagh. We scored something like 3-15 (Derry 3-14 Armagh 1-11). That got the buzz back in the county. We had a great support that day.

“There was a great buzz in the county. We didn’t train in Owenbeg we trained all round the county.”

Armagh had been favourites to win the game, but Derry hit them with an incredible attacking assault spear headed by Conleith Gilligan and Eoin Bradley. Kielt didn’t score that day but made some telling contributions including a great pass to set Bradley up for a goal.

But the final was a disappointment for the Derry players and Kielt.

John Brennan remained for another season but then departed and in came Brian McIver, who did three years (2013-2015), then Damian Barton did two years (2016-2017), and then Damien McErlain from 2018 to 2019.

The changable nature of the Derry team was a constant in Kielt’s time on the squad.

“What I found with Derry was that the panels changed quite a lot from year to year. Whether it was boys who didn’t get asked back, or boys who left. Generally if you look at the top counties you know who their top players are. I could tell you know who the best 10 or 12 are for Dublin or Donegal for the summer. Whereas for Derry the team changes so much from year to year. Certainly a change in personnel can help from time to time. But I felt that at times there was too much changing.”

Kielt admitted that there were times when he was sitting on the bench for Derry that he questioned whether he wanted to stay.

For him, it was the issue of club and county that frustrated.

“When I was playing, county players couldn’t play for club. So you were maybe playing National League, playing half a game, or not playing at all. That doesn’t help with fitness. This is while club players are playing and training away. Once the summer season started, you missed club games, and if you weren’t playing county games it was really difficult.

“I remember one time there were eight weeks in the summer, when I had played one game. Then you went back to the club and you were expected to be the main man. But that was difficult because you didn’t have match fitness.”

Kielt stepped away from the county set up in 2015, for the very reason that he wasn’t getting enough game time. He wasn’t getting on for Derry, and couldn’t play for his club and he felt that he needed time away from the county game.

“It just wasn’t fair and wasn’t right. I was sitting on the bench for Derry and playing nothing for Kilrea. I was no use to anyone.

“It was the middle of the summer and I hadn’t played that much.

“It was hard because you want to be dedicated to Derry, but then you are losing out yourself because you are not playing any football.”

“That’s the issue with fixtures, because if the fixtures were done right, then you wouldn’t miss out much football.”

Kielt said that at the time he received a few messages from players asking him about his decision to stop playing county football.

“They could understand where I was coming from. I had experience both sides playing for Derry. There have been years where I had been on consistently, and I could see boys who weren’t getting on and they left, and you could understand.”

When county players don’t perform for the club, they will tend to come in for criticism on the sidelines, as well as online. Players deal with it in different ways.

Kielt has watched the change in attention that players get.

“There was no Facebook back then or Twitter. But it has gone to a new level now. Players are much more open to abuse, and they get opinions from anonymous accounts. I didn’t see any of that when I was growing up. It’s difficult for amateur boys getting that at the weekend, then have to go in to work and face that. Too many boys can set up anonymous accounts and slag and say what they want but never get caught.”

Kielt said that he never experienced any such attention, but he knows players who do get abuse and he feels frustrated for them.

The younger players are more likely to experience the social media scrutiny, but it is those same younger players who have provided Kielt with the motivation to stick at it in his 30s.

Kilrea won a minor championship in 2016, and those players are coming into the senior team. For Kielt, who’s 31 years-old there is hope that that senior championship so desperately hoped for could be coming.

“We have half a dozen boys who are 30 or older, we have an u21 team which was fairly strong they were beaten by Dungiven in the final by a point.

“We are training well and hopefully we can have a good summer.

“You look around the county and think why not. Magherafelt won the championship last year, and I guarantee if you ask most clubs in the senior championship if they were playing Magherafelt they would fancy themselves. But fair dues, they done it.

“Slaughtneil are probably still the team to beat, but you have Coleraine, Magherafelt, Bellaghy and Lavey who will all be pushing. It is wide open. And keeps everyone interested.”

So for Kielt there is still plenty of time for Kielt to experience the crazy buzz and noise of big days out in Ulster. And, as he said, perhaps even a return to the county set up.