Kelly’s Hero flag

[spirit of 1990]

I get we all want to celebrate our history and I’m all for that massively but don’t you think it would be abit strange to have a flag up commemorating a caretaker manager who put our survival down to the players and the manager who bought him here and not have flags up for say Ray Wilkie, Daz & Dave, Ian Evatt and even to a point our current manager who led us to our highest ever position in football for over 50yrs

Surely they are more worthy “hall of fame” members to be forever celebrated in flag mode.

Rob is a wonderful man and I will forever be grateful for the compassion he showed myself in one of my darkest hours but I do think there are far more worthy people to celebrate at the club and he would think that himself

I’d agree that there are many other worthy people who have been associated with the club down many many years….the difference is we actually had a flag made for this man and the flag had just been shoved away & forgotten about. bluemooncrab and PJ (among others) put their points across very well.
Like I said earlier, we’ll put it up and if it gets a negative response off the wider support we can very easily take it down or move it.

[Hadrian]

Indeed.

While the thread title is "Kelly's Hero" or it is described as "Kelly's Heroes" in the first post of the thread. If the latter is the actual text on the flag the it celebrates far more than 'a caretaker manager'.

I would also be against trying to argue that the achievements of a manager at one time in our history and greater or leeser than those of another at a different time and in different circumstances. All those mentioned above deserve to be recognised for what they achieved in itself and not in comparison with the achievement of others.

[pjdaly]

It would be wildly inaccurate if anybody were to look up at that flag (if, for instance, it was mounted in the Fanzone) and think "this is stuck up there because this Rob bloke is the greatest figure in this club's entire history". It would simply be a memento or an artefact celebrating one memorable time when the highly improbable happened. Because this flag simply IS - - - ie it exists - - - we can choose to keep it, stick it on a wall, or bin it. I would prefer to keep it somewhere because it represents an atmosphere of survival against the odds at a particular time in our history. However it should never mean it represents a time and an achievement over and above all others. Anyone elevating it to that sort of deified pedestal would be lacking knowledge of our club's whole story!

Brian Arrowsmith doesn't have a flag but he rightly has the main stand in his name for all that he did for his local club. Ray Wilkie doesn't have a flag but he does have a stand and a road which enable us to remember this great fellow so that's not too shabby.

Every "museum" has bits and bobs commemorating times past and every "museum" unfortunately has far more missing than is represented from the particular time in question. In a perfect world, our "museum" would have artefacts and mementos comprehensively acknowledging every great moment in our history but because we don't have a perfect set of artefacts should we bin those we do have so as to balance things up?

If we just stick to managers here there are many deserving of recognition in our "museum" and not just Rob! I could name several, I really could, but I'll just name one here for argument's sake that the vast majority of current Barrow fans probably haven't heard of. Back in 1973-74 Peter Kane was our player-manager and his greatest achievement mirrored a very close parallel to that of Rob Kelly's. We were rooted at the foot of the NPL and the real fear was that because of the state of our ground and our pitch the NPL would vote us out if we finished in what were then places for re-election. If that had happened there has to be a real chance the club would have ceased to exist. Anybody remembering those times remembers the dire state of the club. Peter Kane and his valiant team of local players mounted an astonishing revival in the second half of that season which saw us finish third from bottom, just one place above the re-election places. Barrow AFC survived by the skin of their teeth. We might well have gone under if we had finished one place lower.

I would like a memento in our "museum" to commemorate the job done by "Kane's Heroes" but just because we don't have one it doesn't mean I wouldn't want to keep this one for "Kelly's Heroes" just in order to avoid imbalance. We just have to maintain common sense and perspective and not run away with the idea that Rob is more important than any others, but retain the fact that he was important if only for a short while.

[spirit of 1990]

Perfectly explained & wrote Paul.

[McMark]

Aye, he da man!

[dodger]

Hope some of you can think back a little and a flag related to Ray Wilkie and our trophy success was Made and was displayed on the Steelworks side for around a season. It was Huge about 25ft x 10ft.There was also a very large Barrow AFC Flag on white background.Both very expensive and helped funded by some of our older supporters. They were displayed at all home games at around the same time Steve was doing the Flag bit (The York one being the Best).The big blue flag had a replica of the FA Trophy and as I couldn’t get a decent image of it off Barrow at the time I contacted Stevenage and they couldn’t do enough to help me. To display these flags took a lot of work and organising and eventually they got battered by the weather and we’re left under the stand to rot.

[HenneysKnee]

I think the reason people mention this is because he is not very well at the moment

I think it’s been mentioned because it’s been found (wherever that was)

[barrowaberdeen]

I’d put it up. We should celebrate our history. It’s a historic flag.

Absolutely. What the [SwearFilter] are the wokies on about, it’s a silhouette of him isn’t it, not an image of his backside,and it’s got nowt to do with him, he’ll never see it. Put it up for god sake.

Wtf is it to do with 'wokies' I despair.

And fwiw I thought up the Kelly's Heroes thing for the raffle which I don't think endeared me to him one bit lol.

Of a mercy, not on the HSE. There's stuff can go back up there that's better. They are in the Trust Shop.

[Gaffer]

Put it up somewhere. It's a piece of our history and a flag was made with supporters money to honour it. It could be argued that that moment in time was bigger than the trophy wins and getting up in the first place. Whatever we think, it was certainly a cause for celebration and the flag will be a reminder of that.

[BarrowLad71]

Maybe after all of this we can decide on a flag together to put on the HSE end.

I would say maybe BAFC GMV WE ARE ONE

Or something like that. Open to everyone’s ideas

[pjdaly]

Put it up somewhere. It's a piece of our history and a flag was made with supporters money to honour it. It could be argued that that moment in time was bigger than the trophy wins and getting up in the first place. Whatever we think, it was certainly a cause for celebration and the flag will be a reminder of that.

I think you make an excellent point, Gaffer. I don't think it captures the significance of what Kelly's achievement means if we say "well, it was just an escape from relegation places and it's not on the same level as winning a title or a trophy". We are used to the mantra that says winning is everything in sport, but there's one thing even more important than winning and that is surviving! Rob Kelly kept us in the Football League and we can only imagine what would have happened to the club if we had suffered the ultimate indignity of dropping down again after just one season, having spent 48 years trying to climb back up. It would have been calamitous, not to mention humiliating. We would have been a laughing stock. So I agree with you, Gaffer, staying up a couple of years back meant more to me than even, say, the Trophy wins. It meant we survived rather than being plunged into the abyss (for a second time).

One final point . . . when viewed from a wider time perspective, the Kelly's Heroes flag doesn't just pay tribute to Rob Kelly and his team, it paints a picture of how fans were feeling about the enormity of escaping relegation that season. If that flag survived for 100 years it would tell fans in the far distant future not simply about a heroic manager and team but about the knife-edge exhilaration that the supporters were experiencing in that dramatic season.

[blue nige]

What made it worse was that WE couldn't help Rob or the Team it's all we could do that in itself deserves it to be kept it's part of social history that affected us all that I for one don't want to go through again!

[boyliegladbach]

Put it next to the Stanway flag.

[mickmike wilson]

It’s just a flag, we have it & it’s bought & paid for so why not put it on display is my opinion here.

[spirit of 1990]

The Kelly’s Heroes flag and one off the Trust now on show.
Surely that’s far better than looking at a wall of grey tin sheeting.