Anzac Day 2023 marked not only the first time that Jake and Will Kelly had shared the same field in an AFL game. It is the only game the brothers have played together, at any level, with or against each other.
Jake Kelly, the elder brother and an Essendon defender, had “heard murmurings” that his younger brother, Collingwood’s Will Kelly, might be called up for Anzac Day in the days before the game.
“Then I found out … a few hours before. So it was very special,” said the elder brother, who has played 137 games for Adelaide and the Bombers.
“I’ve never played a game with him on the same ground, or in the same team or anything,” said Jake, attributing the lack of fraternal footy to a “significant” age gap between the pair – Jake is 28 and Will, in his fifth season at Collingwood, still just 22.
Essendon’s Jake Kelly and Collingwood’s Will Kelly.Credit: AFL Photos / Getty Images
The Collingwood Kelly had been picked as the substitute, for his fourth game and first since 2021 and brought on late in the third quarter to replace Nathan Kreuger, who had played little footy this season but whose height was needed in a side that had lost recognised ruckmen and talls at each end.
Jake plays in defence as a flanker, while Will, who has been beset with injuries for much of his time at Collingwood, has lately been deployed as a 194 cm wingman in the VFL and was thrown on in that same role. Will justified the faith of Craig McRae, gathering five disposals, two marks and was a link in the chain – with unheralded Oleg Markov and Trey Ruscoe – that led to an important Jack Ginnivan goal.
While they shared the field for the first time, the Kelly brothers did not compete in any contest for the footy.
“No I didn’t but just to get a photo after the game with him, I’ll remember that for the rest of my life,” said Jake.
Brotherly connection: Will Kelly and Jake Kelly.Credit: AFL Photos / Getty Images
“Right now you don’t think about it but I think once footy finishes and you’re old and look back and go ‘wow, I was playing on Anzac Day in front of 95,000 people on Anzac Day with your brother in the opposite team.’ Pretty amazing.”
Watching his sons from the Collingwood hierarchy’s seats outside the official function was their father, Craig Kelly, who had the distinction of playing in the 1995 game that gave birth to the Essendon-Collingwood tradition and who also happens to be Collingwood’s chief executive.
“It was pretty special. I mean, it’s Anzac Day, two of them playing together and I think both contributed, so you’ve got to be proud of them,” said Craig Kelly. “And then sort of cheering a bit harder for Collingwood. It can’t get much better – 95 (000) plus.”
Kelly senior played before the previous record and hitherto second-highest home and away record crowd of 94,825 in 1995’s drawn Anzac Day classic, in which as many as 10,000 were also turned away from the MCG, in a game that wasn’t pre-sold and had much less ceremony.
Kelly senior felt that the 2023 game had surpassed the 1995 match as a complete spectacle. “Yeah, they just do it better, everyone. We just do it so much better than then. It’s better, it’s organised.
“That day we turned up, it took us an hour to get … into here. Whereas now there’s celebration, the medal.” The CEO added, unprompted, “how good are the Daicos boys.”
As the only Kelly male to be nursing disappointment at the result, Jake felt that the Bombers had lost too many ground-level battles in the final quarter.
“Lost contests, minus 17 I think in the last quarter, or 15,” said Jake of Essendon’s fade out. “So we got smacked around the ball and they got field position and that’s usually the way it goes.
“If you’re losing ground balls by 17, then you’re a fair chance to lose.”
