GEORGIE KELLY WASN’T going to wait any longer than he needed to. Injury meant his Rotherham debut took four months to arrive, but his first impact took all of eight minutes. 

Kelly was sprung from the bench in Rotherham’s tense season finale, in which they needed to beat Gillingham away from home to guarantee automatic promotion to the Championship. Gillingham, meanwhile, needed a draw to avoid relegation. 

Georgie Kelly was our guest on this week’s edition of The Football Family podcast, a weekly pod covering all things Irish football exclusive to members of The42. To listen to the full interview, subscribe at members.the42.ie 

Rotherham led 1-0 when Kelly was introduced…eight minutes later it was 2-0, delirious bodies were spilling onto the pitch and Rotherham were going up. In the middle of it all was a now-shirtless Kelly: he had gambolled onto Chiedozie Ogbene’s pass and calmly slotted the ball into the top corner to kickstart the mayhem. 

“These moments are hard to recount, and it’s hard to explain to someone who hasn’t experienced it”, says Kelly on this week’s edition of The Football Family podcast. ”It’s weird: I don’t have a clear memory [of the goal], and it’s the same with a lot of my goals, as it’s pure instinct. Even the celebrations: you don’t have any control, it’s all pure subconscious. It’s all a bit of blur looking back. Even the rest of the game is a bit of a blur.”

Relief was the overriding emotion at full-time, says Kelly. Rotherham had led the league for most of the season, but MK Dons’ relentless form and his side’s dip in form during the run-in – five defeats and two draws across nine league games from 1 March to 12 April – meant there was jeopardy riding on the final day. 

Kelly was the club’s only signing of the January window but he had to wait until the season’s final day to finally make his debut. The calf injury which cut short his FAI Cup final appearance for Bohemians recurred the week before his planned debut and with the physios treating the injury with extra caution, that debut took much longer than planned. 

Spending so long on the sidelines without making an impact was difficult. 

“To move to a new country and be in a new environment, going into a new club on your own in January, it is tough. It’s not easy to integrate into a new club and culture and the injury made it that little bit more tough.” 

I ask if he doubted himself during such a lengthy liminal period. 

“Absolutely. If you’re me anyway, you do. I know some lads are more hyper-confident than me but yes, doubt sinks in. There’s still doubt. After the goal the fans are all buzzing thinking they’ve signed this great goalscorer and I’m trying to say, ‘You need to relax here.’ There’s still doubt: I am still not sure whether I can play at this level.

“I have a lot of work to do. Just from training alongside the lads. Michael Smith, our striker: he is phenomenal. I think I am nowhere near him yet, and I have a lot of work to do myself in the off-season. I am looking forward to getting into the off-season as I’m getting into the work now to see where I can get to. I still don’t know if I’ll make the cut.” 

He says the self-doubt isn’t “suffocating”, but is a kind of rationalism about what’s realistic. 

“It probably hinders me a little more than others”, says Kelly. “I find this interesting: for a lot of players I see going across [from Ireland to UK], they have this little aura that nothing fazes them. I feel that serves them much better. Ronan Curtis: I played with Ronan at Derry and nothing fazed him.He could be having a bad game but nothing would faze him, he was just hyper-confident, and back himself. It’s not arrogance, it’s confidence. I probably don’t have it, and it’s something I need to work on.

“But it’s tricky: I would also be cautious of it changing who I am as a person. I don’t want to adjust my personality to try and become a little bit more arrogant or hyper-confident. I wouldn’t want to change who I am to adjust the type of player I am on the pitch.

“There’s been a lot of talk lately about management styles, about players being different now and having to man-manage different players, and labelling players are soft. It is an interesting debate to me. With this machoness in sport, I think people used to mask who they are with a tough mentality and with shouting, roaring and anger. I don’t think it’s needed when people are being open and honest.” 

Kelly celebrates a goal for Bohs in the Europa Conference League last year. PA PA

Kelly won’t change and he says football today is more open to that kind of authenticity. 

“That’s why I have been a little bit successful. Bohs was a very young side, and Keith [Long] and Trevor [Croly] were really cautious about that, as players were young and learning.

“Looking back, that’s probably why the environment suited me. I hand-picked my move [to Rotherham] based on the culture and environment. The manager is really open and honest and really interested in people and psychology. I probably wouldn’t be as successful in certain environments. And that’s fine. I don’t want to change who I am to try and be more successful in football. You don’t want to change your identity.” 

Kelly had plenty of offers after his fabulous season at Bohs, but settled on Rotherham having spoken to some people behind the scenes along with the manager, Paul Warne. 

I like honesty and openness. When I signed for Rotherham the manager here was honest with me and said, ‘I don’t know if you’re going to be successful here.’ He was openly saying he didn’t know how I’d do, that it was very hard to compare the shift from League of Ireland to this level but that they were willing to support me and give me a go. Whereas other managers would be saying, ‘You can come in here and score 10 goals before the end of the season, you can do this and you can do that.’”

There’s that realism again.

Kelly isn’t joining his team-mates for a celebratory trip to Las Vegas as he is taking a week off before returning early for pre-season, having missed so much football so far this year. He also has exams to finish: he is completing a Masters in Renewable Energy and Environmental Finance at the UCD Smurfit School. He started it just as he was starting with Bohs, saying the plan was to move into industry rather than become a full-time footballer. 

“You have to be rational about things, I sussed out that was the Masters I wanted to do and it fitted perfectly with Bohs as they were based in Dublin and trained in the evenings. UCD and the Smurfit School have been massively helpful and flexible with me, I didn’t expect to be moving to another country. 

Initial plans haven’t worked out as intended and Kelly will instead be a Championship striker next season. 

He wasn’t visualising that a year ago, but is he thinking of the international team? 

“No, I don’t really. I understand at the level I’m at and the club I’m at that if I do well I might be in contention, but that comes second fiddle to proving I can perform at this level. It’s not something I am consciously looking at. Maybe that’s that self-doubt creeping in again, I don’t know.” 

But life is what happens while you’re busy making other plans, and based on what has happened for Georgie Kelly of late, don’t rule anything out.