I followed them all over. The days of my life tbh.
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- Well known.
- Rosmuc
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If you think this, you’re an idiot.
You’re not an idiot.
Must do better.
Moycullen is a huge parish now. High standard at hurling and basketball.
Hateful redneck cunts all the same. Cousin on cousin for too long.
Bet you none of the limerick’s knew it
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Paul Flynn: The Space Invaders who will surround David Clifford and give Galway a chance of victory
David Clifford has the talent to be considered an all time great but his legacy will be defined by what happens in All Ireland finals. As a Kerry player, he cannot expect it any other way.
Kerry crave space. If I was going all mystical, I would say it must have something to do with growing up with the Atlantic to the west and the wild and untamed lands all around that creating a desire for freedom. But, of course, it has nothing to do with that.
Kerry have a tradition of attacking, of great kick and catch Gaelic football and playing with pace either with foot or hand passes. The players are brought up to charge into space, to find it quickly and to try and make things happen. They want to kick it long and transition quickly. They crave space in Kerry, but then every forward does. The difference between forwards in many other teams and a Kerry forward is that a Kerry forward is used to having it, it’s something they feel entitled to. Galway, in the All Ireland final, won’t pander to their sense of entitlement.
The question Kerry – and in particular David Clifford – will have to answer is: what are they prepared to do to win a game that won’t be played on their terms?
Can they operate in the tight quarters that Galway will ensure is the stage for this game? All Ireland finals – like finals in the World Cup or Euros – are often won by the team designed to make fewer mistakes and frustrate the opposition. It is a simpler game to play in the tension of a major final but it is also a gameplan that this Kerry team have yet to prove they can overcome.
They have looked uncomfortable when they have been smothered. It took them 50 minutes to break free from Cork and Galway are a much better, more disciplined and more organised side than Cork. For that reason, I think Galway could sucker punch Kerry.
I don’t think the pressure is felt less in Galway than in Kerry, I’ve never believed that when it gets to this point of the competition. I played against enough underdogs to see the pressure they felt was as great as anything we as heavily fancied favourites were experiencing. It’s an All-Ireland final.
In towns like Tuam, they won’t have been talking about anything else. All you have to do is see all the flags to know how much it means. It can lift you but it also reminds you how much it means and the only way, in my experience, that you don’t feel pressure is if you can block out the external noise and persuade yourself the game is just another part of the process.
Kerry are expected to win. That would be the case most years but when they have a player who is regarded as one of the greatest the game has ever seen then that expectation increases. It increases on David Clifford too. I think he’s a phenomenon. His power, pace and his skill are too much for any one player to contain. But Galway won’t use one player to contain him and it is how he responds to that test which will determine the outcome of this final and go a long way to shaping his reputation.
This is the reality for Clifford. He is being positioned as one of the greatest players who has ever played the game, but you can’t do that without winning All-Irelands. Clifford isn’t playing for Carlow or Longford, he is a Kerry player and Kerry players are judged by their medals.
Some people question the players around Clifford at times but I’ve never played with a great player who didn’t raise the standards of all around them and these are the games when they do that.
This is, for me, the question mark that remains until Kerry win an All Ireland. Clifford can score for fun, he can pick up five points in a half like he did against Dublin, but this might be a different game.
Michael Jordan was scoring 40 points a match and feeling good about it until Phil Jackson came along and told him that he was a team player now, that he would judged on how deep the Chicago Bulls went into the season. They needed his points for that but they also needed an awareness of all that was around him. When he couldn’t score because of what the opposition did to stop him, he could play somebody else in instead.
This could be Clifford’s role in the final. It is a conundrum for a player as talented as he is. If he scores 1-8, Kerry will win, but if he tries to score 1-8 when Galway are cutting off all lines of attack, it might be Galway’s path to victory.
A really good game might not be him scoring, it might be a selfless act of creating space for one of the other forwards. Total selfless football.
We had it often in finals where the man of the match was somebody the public might not have expected but who we knew we could rely on in the tension of a final. Clifford’s game today might involve creating the platform for those players.
Because you can have all the talent in the world, but a final is about having the street smarts to know when to use it. Clifford has everything you would want when looking for a player but in an All Ireland final you discover one last thing: do you have the mental capacity that allows you to be patient. Against Galway, he must understand when to do the selfless thing and when to use his talents ruthlessly. The great players get this, and they do it on the big stage.
In his case, he might have to realise that he won’t be able to get the mark he wants when the high ball comes in because of the players around him. He might have to wait for the right chance to take a point but all the time he’s bringing others in to the game. Nothing else matters.
When Steven Gerrard slipped against Chelsea in 2014, people said he cost Liverpool a Premier League title. The slip didn’t but Gerrard’s reaction did nothing to help Liverpool get back into the game. He tried to score from every angle, to be the hero that would cancel out the mistake.
Clifford, like Gerrard, can do things ordinary players can only dream of but he must demonstrate a coolness against Galway as much as his ability.
He must take Kerry over the line for an All Ireland if that reputation is to stand up to scrutiny. There is no point producing the moments of magic, the shareable content that people love, if at the end of the weekend, Galway are the All Ireland champions.
If Clifford does what is required, it will be hard for Galway to stop Kerry. But it is no exaggeration to say his reputation will be shaped by what happens on an All Ireland final day. He is a leader for Kerry, he’s not an inexperienced player anymore. His legacy depends on the All Ireland medals he ends up with, and that starts with who lifts Sam Maguire on Sunday afternoon.
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There’s some real knowledge in that article …
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He’ll be Dublin manager down the line
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I was on the fence til he had a pop at Stevie G. Great article.
I think Flynn’s general point is well made - James O’Donoghue who at that time was Kerry’s top forward and probably the top forward in Ireland sacrificed his game in the 2014 final when faced with that Donegal defence - but I don’t remember many unheralded forwards becoming the key men in football finals. Usually it’s either a star forward or a relatively unheralded defender who gets Man Of The Match.
It has happened a couple of times in hurling alright where an unheralded forward causes wreck - Damien Quigley in 1994 and Shane O’Donnell in 2013 spring to mind, but I can’t think of it happening in football, it’s pretty much always the usual suspects who have to do the damage up front.
I agree JOD sacrificed his game that day but Kerry got lucky that day. The Donegal keeper cost them. It very nearly backfired.
Daithi Burke had the measure of Gillane in the 2018 hurling final but Limerick largely kept the ball away from him.
Wasn’t there a story doing the rounds before about David Clifford playing injured in a 14s game and the crowd they were playing had three on him the whole time 
There’ll be an element of that Sunday. I think clifford is playing on injections and it wears off after 45/50 mins and he goes out of the game. However he’s kept on as he occupies one if not two of the opposition
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It’s no great secret he hasn’t been training much for the last few months.
Kerry did a Daft Punk featuring Nile Rodgers (the sound of the summer - check it out) that day - they did get lucky but they were always going to have to be up all night to get lucky.
They basically did what Dublin did in 2011 against Donegal and kept men back marking space and banged their heads off the brick wall enough to knock it down.
Donaghy was the man that day.
Clifford and Comer are both well understood to cause wreck if given a chance. So one of the other star forwards. ie. O’Shea for Kerry and Walsh for Galway might have to take up the slack.
Nearly every potential individual match up looks shit for Galway. But this game is very unlikely to be played through the framework of individual match up terms. I think the only Galway can win is by going full Ulster. I think it’ll be a very dour final, especially if played in the wet which looks likely. To me Shane Walsh’s mazy running ability especially off transitions could be Galway’s key attacking weapon. I think Galway have an excellent chance and I could see them winning something like 1-10 to 0-11.
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I see Twitter bringing up Canavans goal in 2005 again - surely the most overrated goal (technical wise) of all time. It was huge in powering Tyrone to victory but it was a pretty simple finish once mulligan laid it off
Ah jaysus it was a great goal and not a simple finish at all, he had three defenders around him and only had a very small amount of space to aim at. One of the best goals you’ll see in an All-Ireland final from all aspects - the move came right from the back, the ambition of it, the catch and the hold up play by Mulligan, the timing and direction of the run by Canavan, the sliderule finish, the opposition and the context.
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Flynn knows what’s needed to win multiple All Irelands.
”There can be no doubt that a tribe including many members who, from possessing in a high degree the spirit of patriotism, fidelity, obedience, courage, and sympathy, were always ready to give aid to each other and to sacrifice themselves for the common good, would be victorious over most other tribes; and this would be natural selection."
Charles Darwin
There’s also a key point made there that Clifford has a tendency to try win matches on his own when Kerry are behind and takes shots from everywhere …sometimes a pass to a fella in a better position is the better option and could result in Kerry getting over the line on Sunday .
That donoghue move in 2014 was pot luck that it worked out …
I observed that Paul Galvin was beaten by Mulligan in the air, allowed Mulligan to screen the ball after passing it off to Canavan and didn’t get close enough to Canavan to put in a tackle. A litany of errors by the failed Wexford manager.
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Attitude and pragmatism is the point. Fitzmaurice asked O’Donoghue to sacrifice his own game and O’Donoghue was willing to do so for the team.
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