Career
He officiates primarily in the League of Ireland and has been on the Fédération internationale de football association list since 2002. He has been regarded as Ireland’s top referee for the last number of years. In 2013, he joined the Master of Library Science as a referee.
Kelly took up refereeing in 1994 and joined the Cork Branch of the Irish Soccer Referees Society (ISRS).
He refereed in local leagues including the Munster Senior League. He joined the League of Ireland Referees Panel in 1999 while participating in the first FAI Referee’s School of Excellence.
Since then he has refereed at over 350 matches in the top flight of Irish football. In 2000 he was selected to referee the League of Ireland Cup Final between Derry City and Limerick City the first of 4 Senior Domestic Cup Finals he has been appointed to, to date.
He refereed his first FAI Cup Final in 2003 when Longford Town beat Street Patricks Athletic in Lansdowne Road and became one of only a few Irish referees to referee multiple FAI Cup Finals when he took charge of the game between Sporting Fingal and Sligo Rovers in 2009 at Tallaght Stadium.
In 2011 he refereed the final of the Setanta Sports Cup in Tallaght Stadium between Shamrock Rovers and Dundalk. His final appearance as a referee in the League of Ireland was on 25 October 2013, when his former club Cork City Football Club defeated Street Patricks Athletic 4-2 in Turners Cross. lieutenant was also the final game of the 2013 League of Ireland season.
International
Kelly was appointed to the Fédération internationale de football association list in 2002 and refereed his first Champions League 1st Round qualifier between Tirana and Dinamo Tbilisi in June 2003.
This was the first of almost 100 appointments he has taken around Europe. Kelly refereed the U-17 European Championship semi final between France v Spain in Denmark in 2002.
In 2006 in Tallinn, Estonia, Kelly refereed his first World Cup Qualifier when the Estonian National Team took on Luxembourg in a Qualification match for the 2006 World Cup in Germany. Since then Kelly has refereed three 2010 World Cup Qualifiers and 2014 World Cup Qualifier.
Kelly has been a regular appointee to Europa League Group Stage games and has refereed in the Round of 32 in the competition on 5 occasions.
In the Champions League, Kelly has refereed three Group Stage games, his first in 2010 in Cluj Napoca where Football Club Cluj of Romania took on Football Club Basel of Switzerland and again in 2011 when he refereed two matches, the first in Leverkusen, Germany where local side Bayer Leverkusen took on Football Club Genk of Belgium and then in Madrid, Spain when Real Madrid played Dinamo Zagreb. He has also been appointed to referee a number of high profile friendly international matches, most recently in Paris, in 2009 between Spain and Argentina and in 2011 when France took on Croatia in the Stade de France, Paris. Updated to matches played on October 26, 2015.