NEWS PHOTO JAMES TUBB
CFL columnist Graham Kelly (far right) celebrates his 80 birthday alongside David Kelly, one of Graham's sons, Lorena Kelly his wife and Al Ruckaber who covered the CFL alongside.
jtubb@medicinehatnews.com@ReporterTubb
Graham Kelly says he’s learned a lot from the game of football.
It would be hard not to considering he’s covered the Canadian Football League for 50 years. Kelly celebrated his 80th birthday Friday at his home in Medicine Hat with family and friends. When the 2022-23 CFL season kicked off it marked 50 years of Kelly writing a weekly column for the News, Inside the CFL.
“I’ve been doing it for a long, long time and it’s been it’s been tremendously enjoyable experience for me,” Kelly said. “I love the game, I love the people in it and as a person who spent 35 years in the teaching profession, football and the people in football taught me a great deal about life and coaching and how to work with people, so it’s been a marvellous ride.”
Kelly started covering the CFL in 1972 but his passion for the sport and league developed long before. As a child he can remember sneaking through an open gate at Taylor Field in Regina after the third quarter to watch Winnipeg and Jack Jacobs take on the Roughriders.
He worked for the Saskatchewan club in the 50s as a water boy, something he said will stick with him for life. In the 60s, his next door neighbour covered Saskatchewan for the United Press International and asked Kelly to take over on the football side.
While covering the CFL, Kelly worked as a school teacher, an alderman, a councillor, wrote two books and helped raise two sons, David and Robert. He said it was easier to budget his time when he was working than once he retired.
“The school year came to an end on June 30 and the CFL season was half over by Labour Day when the school year started up again, so that worked very well,” Kelly said. “City business is intermittently busy, none of it ever really interfered and the games are generally on the weekend. I found in 1995 when I decided I would retire in three years when I hit 55, I wanted to sort of bridge into another career, which would be writing books on Canadian football, so I started writing. I learned frankly just to be a really good manager of time. I set out, I have to write 1,000 words a day on this, and just become really good at organizing. In fact, I found I became a poor time manager once I retired. I was far more efficient when I had 101 things to do.”
Kelly was named to the Canadian Football Hall of Fame in 2002 and was inducted into the Medicine Hat Sports Wall of Fame in 2016. He said he never expected to write on the CFL for 50 years and considers himself lucky for being able to do so and for the people he’s met throughout his decades of coverage.
“I’ve had people in the business who have treated me exceptionally well; Al Ruckaber from Medicine Hat being one of them,” Kelly said. “A great reporter, a member of the Hall of Fame and that was exceptionally important to me. Because despite being in the Hall of Fame and having written books, I’m an outsider. I don’t make my living as a journalist. Most of the guys in Calgary, Regina, Edmonton, B.C. always treated me 100% but I think there was also a bit of a feeling, that he’s an outsider. But people have been good to me and I love it, I still love it.”
Ruckaber was on hand at Kelly’s birthday celebration Friday, which featured a red and green cake to commemorate Kelly’s two favourite teams: the Roughriders he grew up watching and the Calgary Stampeders who he said have treated him like royalty. Ruckaber said he was proud to be friends with Kelly and work alongside him for decades from teaching to covering the CFL.
“We spent 26 years sitting shoulder to shoulder on the 55-yard line up in the press box, covering Calgary Stampeders’ games, and he has been one of my great, great friends for so long,” Ruckaber said. It’s like, over 50 years. To me, there’s something special about Graham, he’s dead honest, sincere, straightforward and he’s a great person who won’t take any guff from anybody. But he listens and he cares about people. He cares so much about his family, his wife, sons, his grandchildren. I mean, he’s lived a complete life.”
Kelly said he hasn’t thought about stepping away from writing or anything of the sorts, he’s just too inside the CFL.
