Athy's Feely relishing the challenge of League 1 football 

Athy man, Rory Feely is relishing the prospect of competing in Sky Bet League One football after, last week, completing a move from Barrow AFC in the division below to Crawley Town for an undisclosed fee.

The 28-year-old defender penned an 18-month-contract with the Red Devils, whom he hopes to help propel out of the relegation zone over the remainder of the 2024/25 season.

“It’s a massive opportunity for me and one that I couldn’t say no to” Feely told The Kildare Nationalist. “As much as I was enjoying my time at Barrow, it was an opportunity I couldn’t really pass up.

“Originally going over to England, I always wanted to see how far I could progress myself and my career. It’s something that I’ve been dreaming of doing, playing as high a level of football that I can.

“This move gives me a massive opportunity and a massive challenge and it happened, more or less, over 24 hours at the end of last week.

“Crawley got in contact with my agent and Barrow asking what the story was with me. Once they had agreed something, they asked me if was I interested and I said ‘yes’. After that it was all about figuring out how I was going to get myself down to London” he said.

Feely is certainly not fazed by the somewhat precarious situation in which his new team finds themselves in the third tier of English football.

Indeed, with Crawley having at least two games in hand over most to the teams above, the Kildare man insists there is a very real opportunity for them to haul themselves up out of the drop zone and further up the League One table.

“The opportunity of moving to League One always comes with a big challenge and this is just an extra one. I’m not paying too much attention to it” insisted Feely, who made his debut last Saturday when Crawley were on the receiving end of a 95th winner against Wrexham.

“I’m just focusing on winning as many games as we can over the rest of the season and, if we do that, then our position now will be irrelevant.

“The opportunity is there for us to get ourselves up the table a bit, so it’s not a terrible situation and it’s one the team, the management and staff will not be worrying too much about.

“I’m looking forward to it. It’s a really exciting time ahead, should we get ourselves out of it” he added.

Feely had been a regular in the Barrow rearguard, the Cumbria side, while lacking goals this season, still figuring among the top ten defensive teams in League Two.

The former St. Patrick’s Athletic, Waterford United and Bohemians player either started or came off the bench in the vast majority of their divisional games and even found the back of the net for Bluebirds in their 1-1 draw with Notts County back in October.

The previous month he grabbed the headlines with a superb performance between the sticks for his side, after he had been called upon to replace red-carded goalkeeper, Paul Farman 42 minutes into their clash with Swindon Town, which finished 1-1.

Indeed Feely kept his side out in front in that fixture following several top-drawer saves, only to ship an agonising 98th-minute equaliser from Danny Butterworth.

That same month, Feely and his Barrow team mates also reached the third round of the Carabao Cup where they were beaten 5-0 by Chelsea at Stamford Bridge.

While he had recorded a solid opening half to the 2024/25 season, Feely did not enjoy the ideal start to 2025 being forced off just 15 minutes into their New Year’s Day encounter to Bradford City with a low-grade hamstring injury that kept him out of action for two weeks.

The Bluebirds managed only four points from their five league games throughout January and slipped further down the table, although Feely is adamant that it was definitely not for the want of trying.

“We were relatively happy with how things were going at Barrow. It’s just we got stuck in a bit of rut and we couldn’t find our way out of it” he explained.

“We weren’t playing badly. We just weren’t getting the results that we felt we deserved in games.

“All the data showed we were working harder that the other team, but we just couldn’t put the finishing touches to it and we just ended up slumping down a bit in the league.

“Our defensive record was actually quite good, we just needed to take a few more chances” he said.

Having now ended a solid spell with Barrow that began back in January 2023, Feely is hoping he can make his mark with Crawley over the next year-and-a-half and possibly more.

Certainly Crawley manager, Rob Elliot will be hoping the Athy man can help shore up a defence, which, up until this month, had conceded the fourth highest number of goals in the league.

“I spoke to Rob last summer when he was at Gateshead, so I knew a bit about him and he was aware of me at the time. That’s probably something that helped with getting me down here” explained Feely.

“I’ve met with him a couple of times and we’ve trained together. He’s a really good manager and a really good person, so I’m excited to be working with him and to see how we get on over the rest of the season” he smiled.