Kelly's heroes

BRUCE McAvaney’s career was launched more than 30 years ago when he met Adelaide race caller Kevin Hillier at a meet in Kilmore, Victoria.

Now the town can lay claim to Iraq’s answer to Mr Olympics, whose upbeat eloquence has graced the airwaves at various stages of the 2008 Australian Football International Cup.

Sixteen-year-old Ahmed Kelly arrived in Australia from a Baghdad orphanage in 2000 before discovering the magic of football at an Essendon-Brisbane Lions match in 2003.

Awestruck by the skill and speed of the game, Kelly vowed to support the Bombers after being blown away by their convincing win. The very next day he started learning to kick a footy.

For the past two years, he has played for his local side, the Kilmore Blues, in the Riddell District Football League.

While Kelly’s introduction to football was unconventional, the fact that he can play at all is remarkable, given he was born without arms and legs. Watching him climb effortlessly down the ladder from the commentary box at Royal Park, with the use of prosthetic legs and no forearms, reveals the fearlessness with which he attacks life.

“When you have a big task in front of you, you shouldn’t really think in a negative way,” Kelly says.

“You try and think, ‘Okay, that’s the big task I’ve got to do. How am I going to achieve it?’

“So basically, I picked up the ball, forgot everything that might be difficult about it and went on doing it. As they say, practice makes perfect!”

Retiring just after Kilmore’s preliminary final loss a few weeks ago, Kelly has already embarked on his next pursuit after the AFL’s Game Development department offered him a public audience for his other great passion – commentating.

“I listen to the football as much as I can ... just how they commentate really intrigued me, and I thought, ‘Why can’t I do that?’” Kelly explains.

Before the International Cup, Kelly's calling experience was limited to commentating on matches in his lounge room, schoolyard games and the chatter that permeates his brain whenever he’s at a football oval.

But Kelly admits commentating inside his head ‘just isn’t the same as out loud’, and the opportunity to commentate at his first live public event was too good to refuse.

Inspired by the linguistic prowess of experts such as Dennis Cometti, Bruce McAvaney, and Anthony Hudson, Kelly says the spirit of the International Cup encouraged him to take his commentating a step further.

The experience has been particularly challenging considering players in the carnival are relatively unknown.

“If you know them, it’s not that hard, and you have to just pick the right words, too,” Kelly says.

“If you’ve done your homework for the research and the players’ backgrounds it’s definitely not that hard.”

School friends have been surprised to learn of his involvement in the event, unaware that players outside of Australia have adopted its national sport.

“The first thing people think when they hear International Cup, they think of soccer,” Kelly says of the wide-eyed looks that classmates give when he tells them he’s been announcing for the event.

Now bragging a plethora of international experience, calling matches for the likes of Canada, Sweden, Japan and South Africa, a bid for World Cup soccer may just be the next logical step for Ahmed Kelly.