West Coast Eagles veteran Tim Kelly muscles back to his best with midfield role against Adelaide

There is no place like home for West Coast veteran Tim Kelly.

And for the 2023 John Worsfold medallist and 2019 All-Australian, that means being in the midfield.

The veteran spent the first half of the season swinging between on-ball and high forward as incoming coach Andrew McQualter tossed around his midfield options.

After Kelly’s form dipped, he was twice dropped back to the WAFL in a bid to regain form, resurrect his clearance craft and push for an AFL return. It took only one week on both occasions and since resuming as a full-time time midfielder in round 19 against Richmond, Kelly has amassed 15, 26, 26 and 25 possession hauls.

The slow build popped on Sunday when he drove the Eagles’ near victory against top of the table Adelaide at Optus Stadium: 19 of his 25 possessions were contested, to go with 10 clearances, five tackles, a goal and six score involvements.

Kelly, 31, described his game as prosaic rather than pretty.

“It probably wasn’t the prettiest of games, but I feel like that last few weeks I’ve been OK,” Kelly told The West Australian.

“It is good being back around the ball, which just allows me just to play to my strengths, and I’ll just keep working on it.”

With Elliot Yeo out for the remainder of the season, Kelly has become the elder statesman of a midfield laden with youth: Elijah Hewett, Brady Hough and Harley Reid, who is also missing through injury, the staples.

“I have quite been enjoying just getting to work with these young boys,” he said.

“They’re pretty eager to learn and get better and I’m trying to give them as much of my knowledge as I can.

“The club’s completely changed from the moment I walked in the door. The midfield group is completely different now. I am giving back where I can.”

Matched up against Izak Rankine for large swathes of Sunday’s game it was a compelling head-to-head.

Rankine had a slow start before driving the Crows’ second-half revival. Kelly’s game was a more solid line across four quarters with tallies of seven, seven, five and six disposals.

“He’s a very good player, very quick, very dangerous,” Kelly said of Rankine.

“He probably had a little bit of a little bit of a slow start to the game, but in the second half, he was a big reason for them sort of staying in the game.

“He’s a talent and you take your hat off to players like that.”

Kelly spoke of the delicate balancing act between hope and reality in the wake of the narrow loss.

Most pundits expected a blow out, not a nine-point loss with the Eagles in the game til late in the final term.

It follows McQualter’s plea for the team and club to become tougher in the wake of an 83-point round 21 defeat by Melbourne.

“The boys definitely played tough today,” Kelly said.

“All through the week, we didn’t really speak much about offence. Everything was about the way we want to defend as a team and have pride in our defence and have some real defensive intent to play our system.

“We came off the ground knowing that we did that.

“It clearly hasn’t been at the level of AFL standard in order to be able to compete in in games from week to week.

“Last week was a big disappointment in that aspect of the game. And I thought today we bought it. We made a hell of a lot of mistakes in offense, but you know, when we’re defending like that, we’re going to give ourselves a chance.

“Now we have another two weeks to hang our hat on that part of the game.”

He said the Eagles would “take a fair bit” out of the game.

“We’ve had moments throughout the year where we’ve challenged some really good sides for big parts of games and we’ve also been very disappointing,” he said.

“The challenge now is to close that gap. I’d love for us to get to a point where that’s the standard, that’s what we bring week in, week out. We don’t even have to question it.”