By former Gazette sports editor Brad Kingsbury
Coming to grips with the fact that Andrew ‘Toe Punt’ Kelly will no longer be driving the publicity and promotion of local football is hard.
Disbelief filtered across the Mornington Peninsula and regional sporting community when news broke that the man known as ‘Toey’ had lost his short but brave battle with cancer recently.
Over the week, there was an outpouring of grief and anger that this vile disease had again taken someone who, at only 47, should have been looking forward to sharing the next 40 years with wife Katy and children Lachy and Breanna.
Andrew understood the local sporting culture and environment.
He was a more than handy player with several clubs but, as a gifted wordsmith, his long suit was sports reporting – in particular football.
He worked for several newspapers and in local radio with 3RPP on the Mornington Peninsula and, over almost three decades, became the MPNFL’s number one journalist and commentator.
Like many sports-mad journos, Andrew was a glutton for work and when it was offered, he grabbed the opportunity to work for the Pakenham Gazette as the MPNFL correspondent in the early 1990s.
Toey grabbed me when I was writing club notes for Bonbeach FC and asked if I wanted to ‘write football’. I told him I was an amateur but he saw my love of the game and recognised (very correctly) that I was better off promoting it than playing it.
Andrew trained, advised and nurtured me over the next two years. He was directly responsible for me being employed in my dream job as a sports reporter with the Gazette after the old South West Gippsland clubs joined the MPNFL.
Andrew’s professionalism was always on show and there was never any bitterness or open rivalry with other journos. He believed we were all in the same game and, in the end, all working for the good of the sport(s) we loved.
Having said that, nobody loved breaking a story more than Andrew… except maybe me.
The local sporting community will forever miss Andrew’s insight and unwavering support of our great game. He promoted the growth of clubs and leagues without bias and was among the most influential commentators outside the daily press.
Andrew fought his final battle hard, which typified a man who never shirked a challenge in his life.
Rest in peace mate,
Tangles.
