Keith Duggan: Curtailing Clifford’s genius will top agenda for Kerry’s rivals

In Kerry, they don’t go in much for April rhapsodies. But what’s the point of all this genuflection before the old art of Gaelic football if you can’t sometimes just allow yourself to smile and enjoy it all? Last Sunday, in Croke Park, David Clifford made them smile. Just when they thought they had seen it all.

What a show. What a treat.

Yes, it’s a dark time out there with bad news heaped upon worse but when they tune into the headlines in Kerry and hear talk about a possible recession, they will shake their heads and explain that the recession has been ongoing since early 2015.

Oil shortages and crop yields are the yardsticks by which the world measures economic vitality but deep in the Kerry shires and along its gorgeous, battered coastline, prosperity has always been measured in the ability of its football team to bring the famous big silver cup home.

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No All-Ireland since 2014 and the appalling vista of an unstoppable parade by Dublin, their nemesis, into the history books of six All-Irelands; do not talk about austerity.

And then, when Dublin finally fell, the fresh hell of last August; up against a Tyrone team half-stricken with illness, dragged into the netherworld of extra time; Clifford exiting with injury. Ultimately beaten and forced to watch as the most slippery Ulster side of them all win an All-Ireland that Kerry had banked on. The 38th title is proving elusive.

Through this turbulent period, David Clifford has emerged from boy king to the real-achieved thing. On Sunday, he turned what would have been a horribly lopsided league final into a performance art.

Kerry seem to specialise on producing, every generation or so, a player who transcends even the best of his generation to stand as a totem of all that Kerry football believes itself to be.

There’s a great story by Conor O’Clery in which he recalls a visit to the west of Ireland during his time as a Moscow correspondent for The Irish Times in the 1980s. He bumps into a farmer and they start chatting and, in the way of things, the local man soon discovers O’Clery’s business.

“Is it true collectivism is fu**ed?” he asks. It remains a brilliant question with no clean answer except, perhaps: not as long as Kerry are fielding football teams. Yes, they love freedom of expression on the field but don’t kid yourself that Kerry football has been anything other than a form of collectivism. The ideal and the team has always triumphed over the individual.

Razor wit

There’s a beautiful immodesty in the way that Kerry football people unself-consciously refer to 1970s/80s epoch of serial All-Ireland wins as the Golden Years, as though the sunshine was general all over Ireland. Yes, those teams were laden with fabulous distinctive characters; you all know the cast. But it was the entity that was celebrated; the flow of 15 in green and gold, scything through all comers.

Still. Every so often comes a player who seems to find a new way to express the possibilities of the old game. The last quarter century has been a rich harvest. Maurice Fitzgerald. Colm Cooper. Those names became synonymous with certain summers and given moments. David Clifford now seems a blend of both; the razor wit and speed of vintage Cooper with the sumptuous, stoner effortless grace with which Fitzgerald played the game.

On Sunday, on a desolate and windy afternoon in Croke Park, the extravagance of his repertoire became apparent. It was as good as it gets – in every sense, because there is no way that Clifford will be permitted that kind of room to roam in a championship Croke Park environment by Mayo or any other county.

Even as sports fans settled back realising that the result didn’t matter; that they could just sit back and enjoy the sight of a natural playing for the pure joy of it, came the realisation that they might not get to see this again. The contradiction of the joy of watching Clifford play is that he is too good to be allowed play.

And the analysts will tut-tut that the Mayo management left Pádraig O’Hora to mark Clifford one-on-one and the serially outraged will take to twitter to crib about O’Hora mouthing off to Clifford. But that stuff is just noise.

Whatever Mayo get right or get wrong this summer, they are shrewd enough to know that if they are to beat Kerry in Croke Park this year, April is not the time to do it. Showing nothing of themselves was their chief tactic in this game.

So Clifford was left to run amok against his marker and it was beautiful and merciless and for all the banal social media dingo-pack attacks on O’Hora on Sunday night, it took courage to stick honestly to what was an impossible task.

Clifford has an edge in height, physique and speed on most defenders. Give him the ball and a yard of grass and this is what happens. The thing nobody has mentioned about that goal; O’Hora declined the easy option of dragging his opponent to the ground, receiving a second yellow and ending the torture.

There’s always been a touch of Chief Brody about the way Jack O’Connor manages Kerry football teams. He’s alive to the dangers and signs while all around him is summer bliss, always looking out to sea for the shark. The obligation to win senior All-Irelands in Kerry is relentless. But you could tell that Jack was happy in the moment at the final whistle on Sunday; yes, because the team looked in good fettle but also, isn’t it great to get to see something like that? To be a part of it?

Pay tribute

GAA stars are shielded from the public nowadays and they are shielded from the media. The age of storytelling is over. Any interview with Clifford has been brief and utterly inconsequential. But when he made his speech on Sunday, he spoke with a low assurance and had the poise and eloquence to pay tribute to Red Óg Murphy, the talented young Sligo player whose death had been announced a few days before.

Clifford himself is only 23. He’s starting out on his career. His first child was born on the evening that Kerry lost to Tyrone last summer. Even if he wasn’t a once-in-a-lifetime Gaelic footballer he’d stand out in the crowd. It must be a strange kind of privilege to find himself where he now stands: a touchstone for the Kerry tradition.

The big shame, of course, is that Clifford will all but disappear for two months now. Kerry will not play a meaningful game until the All-Ireland quarter finals come round on the last weekend in June. It’s a bit like holding a World Cup and arranging it so that nobody gets to see Messi until the last week of the competition.

By the time he returns to the theatre, all remaining teams will have armed themselves with a series of defensive strategies designed purely to limit his chances to shine. The best compliment that the game can pay David Clifford is that the rest are terrified of ever letting him play like that again.

But can they stop him? It’s the question around which the summer football carnival will spin.