“I saw the danger, yet I passed along the enchanted way,
And I said, let grief be a fallen leaf at the dawning of the day.”
So Patrick Kavanagh said as he once attempted to woo a Kerry woman. He was on a loser there but he created the beautiful Raglan Road as a result. Some years later, Luke Kelly finished the job with his haunting rendition of the song. What has this to do with running? Bear with me!
If Billy The Leveller was alive on this coming Sunday, he wouldn’t be happy. Actually he was apparently never a happy man anyway. He would be woken around 9.30am from his Sabbath snooze by the trodding of a couple of hundred feet down Tyshe. He would grunt to one of his servants to stop this racket. He would be told a minute later by a shivering butler that it was a crowd of runners from all over Kerry and beyond heading down the hill past the cricket ground. “What the devil is the run about?” he would growl, getting out of his feather bed and clutching a musket, nearly knocking over the bed pot in the process. The butler would mutter that it was something called “The Tom Kelly 8K” and retreat quickly to the cellar as buckshot chased his backside.
That night, Buckshot Billy would level the houses of the runners to punish them for waking him at the crack of midmorning. That would be end of running in Ardfert. He hoped.
William Talbot Crosbie was born to land in March 1817, inheriting the family estate in Ardfert. His people had come from the North of England via Laois. He was not a popular landlord, hence his nickname Billy The Leveller. He flattened hundreds of houses between the village and the sportsfield to make room for his horses and cattle. There were hundreds of people living in those houses. One of the biggest streets of Ardfert called Cool was amongst the rubble. He flattened their occupants as well and dissipated them to the four winds.
He was levelled by death himself in 1899 at the age of 82 after three marriages. Not many shed tears. Some of his offspring were more humane and fair in dealing with the local tenants. Promoted sport too. That is the legacy of the Crosbies worth remembering here.
The Crosbies faded away from Ardfert life with the War of Independence but when the runners head off from Ardfert Cathedral on Sunday, they will be running through history. A landscape modelled by Celt and Church, by Leveller and levelled. A run is never just a run.
The Tom Kelly 8K is being run in honour of a founder member of St Brendan’s AC in 1987. Tom Kelly was on the first committee, he sourced athletes, he stood on wintry days at church gate collections, he sold tickets for fund-raising concerts, he sold raffle tickets at fund-raising dances, he located sponsorship for equipment. He worked tirelessly for the new club. And he coached athletes as well. When he blew his whistle, all gathered around and he would then tell the other coach to start coaching! As a well-known face behind the counter at McCowens in Tralee, Tom was popular wherever he went and the club benefitted from his popularity.
The amazing thing is that he was joined on that first club committee by four siblings. John, Bill, Mary and Peggy were there on the first night and afterwards at training sessions, sports days, track and field championships, cross country championships and at every event where St Brendan’s AC was involved. Which was a lot.
Family involvement is the cornerstone of any club. The Kelly family was one of the families that ensured that St Brendan’s AC is thriving today and promoting the TK8K.
And so it begins. It’s 9.30am on a January Sunday morning after a cold and sharp week. The postering is done, the campaign has been crewed, the Eventmaster has done its job and facilitated the entries, the sponsors have provided the butter that had been spread on the bread of the event, the bits and pieces have been welded together and the officials are excited and nervous as the runners walk to the start line in front of the 12th century cathedral. Inside the cathedral walls lie the remains of Gael and Gall. Including Billy The Leveller. Most of the runners won’t know that the foundations of a round tower are buried beside them in the cathedral grounds. Built of a black stone to a height of a hundred feet in the middle ages, it was blown down by a gale around 1771. A vicious gale from, strangely, the east. And it came down straight like the Twin Towers, crushing most of its bottom half stones in the vertical crumble.
The runners toe the line beside the location of the forgotten Ardfert Castle. Now a flat green haggard.
And the whistle is blown by Kellie Regan, grand daughter of Tom and off they go. The rush past the Red Brick Hall on the corner on the left where young people of Ardfert and beyond danced in their hunting days. Built as a community hall in 1914 on a plot donated by Lindsey Talbot Crosbie. See the Crosbies did make up for some earlier mis-deeds. A fund-raising sports meeting to help build the hall was held before the 1916 Rising and raised £20. A lot of money then. The Graces, Allmans, O’Flahertys, Kissanes, O’Sullivans, Healys, Maguires, Dowlings and Collinses raised money also. Olympian Tom O’Riordan’s mother danced sets there in her youth. Her son Mikie danced céilís there later. So did many generations before they exited the tidy hall to walk hand-in-hand in a starry universe. The present club president Patrick O’Riordan attended Muintir na Tíre meetings there on Monday nights after Sundays when he would have ran cross country races in Scahies or Scartaglin. He probably would still have the medal in his coat pocket. A medal won on Sunday is often more treasured on Monday. Ardfert Youth Club were the last to use the Red Brick Hall in the 1970s before it was sold to a private buyer.
Around the bend to the left and the north wind is in the faces as the runners head down the hill known as Tyshe. This is where most of the houses flattened by the Leveller once stood. Away we go from the elegant green of Ardfert pitch and putt site on the right. Let the legs fall in front of you and sure its Sunday and the rest of the day is yours. The impressive former Retreat Centre in off the road on the left. Now a recovery haven. It was once Abbeylands, another construction of the Crosbies in 1870 for their agent, George F Trench. Past Ardfert Sportsfield on the right where Tom Kelly spent many summer evenings with his other love – hurling. A good eye to spot a player with potential or one who wouldn’t get stuck in. Pull. He also spent a fair few athletics days there, especially around the open sports that he loved. Donie O’Sullivan on the PA and Tom Kelly with the starter’s whistle, a crowd of children on the track and a bunch of parents going wild. And the sun shining over it all. Heaven is here.
Before Gaelic games happened, the aristocracy played cricket on big occasions on the smooth and green grass of this sportsfield. Leg before wicket.
The runners may have time to look to the right just after the sportsfield gate and they will glance the Franciscian Friary ruins in off the road. Founded in 1253 or thereabouts, it attracted centuries of pilgrimages and prayer and God knows what else. It still has a presence unlike the once-nearby Crosbie great house which was consigned to ashes in 1922.
On the left, across from the sportsfield, there was a farmyard where cattle were once slaughtered to feed the population of Ardfert. On then past the new graveyard. That graveyard was formerly the orchard and kitchen garden of the ruling Crosby family, complete with glass houses, plum trees, pear trees and a riot of berries. Teams of workers kept everything in order and the buzzing of the bees were in their ears as they went to sleep on summer nights. Now generations of Ardfert people sleep peacefully there. A moment to remember that, in here in this well-kept graveyard, Tom Kelly rests. Cast a momentary eye and runners pass by. This is for you Tom.
On then to the Round Road.
Pace picks up as possibilities develop. Runners emancipated from the stresses and strains and sharp corners of the daily battle. For 8K of runfun. “This emptiness is the presence I seek” says Brendan Kennelly. “Think and feel and dream.” And the blood warms up and along the narrow Round Road they go past the former Ardfert Golf Course, now lush farmland. There’s the location of the first tee in the corner. If you were Brendan Sinnott or PJ Riordan your drives from this tee would go straight down the centre and say an early hallo to the pin. If you were a novice like me the ball would curl right, rise nervously across the road into John Driscoll’s farm. Never to be seen again. New ball, add two shots, day done.
Nine times All Ireland senior women’s Gaelic medal winner Margaret Lawlor Slattery was born in here and her sisters have quite a collection too. Good athletes also in their teen years for Ardfert AC and Eileen Lawlor Dardis came back to Ardfert from Co Meath last summer to run the Banna 10K. Then past Ardfert Quarry on the left where Bill and John Kelly spent many years with one of the most successful companies in Ireland, founded by Pats Carroll. Can’t beat Ardfert limestone.
The graceful Rices’ house comes next on the left. The road that the runners are on now was enclosed with overhanging trees in days gone by. Now open to the sky that watches over Ardfert. Then a right turn at Russell’s T junction with the neat white cottage and the garden ornaments and up the narrow road. Here winter bony bushes and trees welcome the runners to their silent domain on Carroll’s Road. Sleeping briars, ash, sycamore, wild garlic and empty fields awaiting the return of cows in a few months. Think like a cow all stalled up for winter months and imagine what it’s like to be let out when the soft air of spring calls them out. You’ll run faster then. Freedom!
Then on the right comes the house of the late Madge Davis on this January-bare bóithrín. You would hear Madge reciting poetry from this house up to a few years ago. There used to be a shop there which Madge bought from a Corkman called Sheehy and sold groceries and Peggy’s Legs and tóisíns and penny bars. Young people flocked to the shop in the autumns of old times with violet-coloured fingers and buckets of blackberries gathered from the hedgerows of Sackville, Tubrid and Kilgulbin. Madge would store the blackberries in a big tub to be sent away to make dye. She helped to bring colour to the lives of the people! Literally. Later she made a recording of her poems. Remember Madge as you pass by. A bard of Ardfert.
On the left lived the Hewson family, landlords in the area. Then Moynuna Cross also known as the Forge Cross on the Tubrid -Abbeydorney road where blacksmiths Paddy and Jack Clifford beat red iron into horseshoes and put the hissing shoes on horses before the ploughing. Right here there was once a river flowing over ground where horses and cattle were driven to drink the water that flowed onto the road. Of course water facilitated the work at the forge. A forge without water was a mouth without teeth.
You can’t see the river anymore. It has gone underground like many good things. Wouldn’t it be funny if it burst out during the race this Sunday! Wouldn’t Tom Kelly laugh at that! No it wouldn’t be funny and no it won’t break out this Sunday! We hope.
There was also a creamery here on the left, run by the Dairy Disposal Board where farmers brought the milk and had a chat and brought home the new milk for the calves. A daily social event long lost. If those folk in the past could see runners doing this TK8K run, they would surely have a wry comment or two! “Have ye nothing better to be doing on this January Sunday!” Different times.
So the TK8K river of runners then proceeds right and west and up the rise to Tom Kelly’s house on the left. Here Tom and his wife Mary raised their family and equipped them for the race of life. Tom always referred to his wife as “Mary Gorman” and Mary was always proud of her Gaeltacht roots. Her Gaeilge is as pure as the snow. Chomh fíor leis an tsneachta a thiteann sa Ghaeltacht. I remember Tom as he walked this road in his last years, eventually with the aid of a stick. When we stopped to chat, he would raise the stick to say “That’s my point about sport!” and express his feelings on current teams or sporting events. On one of those walks, we talked of the recent Kilmoyley 5K at which he was stewarding – Tom did a lot of stewarding for a variety of organisations - I tried to explain why I had a poor run. “The wrong training, Kissane!” he concluded and shook the stick in the air with a roguish wink.
The Kellys were originally living in the Railway house near Tubrid Cross. Tom’s father Jack Kelly was in charge of the railway gates and a linesman with the railway. Tom’s mother was O’Flaherty from Lixnaw so when they were playing in a county hurling final a Lixnaw flag would appear outside the Kelly house. Tom’s uncle James was a great sportsman and travelled everywhere to matches with Jimmy Shanahan and others. He bought a newspaper every day and that paper was often borrowed by Jack O’Riordan and others to have a peruse. James Kelly was like a reporter with his knowledge of games and could replay games verbally as good as any Skysports channel to an audience of attentive neighbours and friends. If he were alive on Sunday next he would recount how the leader was looking at Tubrid Cross with about 2K to go and who was likely to challenge as the runners swept down the heavenly slope from Tubrid to the finish. Kelly sporting nous. It continues.
On the left at Tubrid Cross is the former Tubrid NS where all the Kelly family went to get their primary education. It is just across the wall from their original family home and there are great stories centred around that school. One of the last teachers there was Maureen Scannell, an energetic and creative personality who carried an aura of teacherability and humourosity around her.
Beside the school on the left are the still-extant buildings of Tubrid Railway Station, an iconic landmark in the parchment of Ardfert. There are volumes of legendary stories inspired by this railway station and the Kelly family are part of it.
Now the runners are turning right, down the best part of the course with a 2K fall into the finish with the simple and galvanising satisfaction of the run. After turning they pass the former home of Olympian Tom O’Riordan on the right. His brother Liam will be stewarding here along with Danny Sinnott, friends and neighbours of Tom Kelly. Across on your left is the Cooleen where Tomo ran a hundred laps one time. Just because he could!
Let loose then into the westerly breeze down Station Road and suddenly you have only a kilometre to go and you get that feelgoodneartheendoftherace feeling (that’s not a misprint!) and then suddenly you see only 200m to go. As you pass that mark and head for the line, think of Walnut Grove Field, out of sight on the right: there Tom Kelly bloomed as a coach and imperator of athletics. When I visited Tom a few months before he passed away in 2020, we talked of the things we would love to do before we leave the world. Tom said he would give anything to be in the middle of Station Road Field with a crowd of athletes just one more time on a summer evening. Selling a clear and glorious experience. There would be running, jumping, throwing, walking, playing of rounders and relays. He would blow that piercingly loud whistle to set it all in motion and there would be beautiful madness for an hour.
I promised Tom we would do it one day again. Unfortunately fate had other plans for the Tubrid man but I kept my promise and got all coached up and spent the summer of 2021 coaching the new generation of St Brendan’s AC. And one evening I mentioned the name of Tom Kelly to my pod of eager-eyed little turbo javelin throwers. At the end of the session, a little lady came up to me and said “Tom Kelly was my Grand Dad. Thank you for what you said!”
Her name was Kellie Regan and Kellie will start the TK8K on Sunday at 9.30am at Ardfert Cathedral. It will set the runners on a seemingly temporary adventure that could last a lifetime. It will send them on the enchanted way, a much more rewarding way than Patrick Kavanagh sought in Raglan Road.
For the first time ever, Kellie’s starting flag will send them on the TK Way.
Tom Kelly 8K registration HERE. 
