Snubbing Cluxton pure foolishness
STEPHEN CLUXTON’S absence from the 2018 All-Star football team seems, to me, simply inexplicable. That he has been overlooked four years on the trot – during a period of time when he has done more than anyone else to build one All-Ireland title on top of another – is the greatest injustice in the sorry history of All-Star selections. Of all the positions on the field, choosing the man for the No.1 jersey on the All-Star team is perhaps the most difficult, and certainly the most arbitrary. The All-Star selectors felt that Monaghan’s Rory Beggan was worthier than Cluxton. We don’t know whether they had cold-blooded statistics (saves made or accuracy of kick-outs or percentage of frees successfully converted) to help them in their decision. Certainly, in this day and age, it should be easy enough to ‘scientifically’ measure the worth of every ‘keeper to his team. Beggan shot 17 points for Monaghan in their Championship run and was his team’s second highest scorer. This clearly gives him an advantage over Cluxton, who is no longer requested to make match-winning points. Is this the single reason why Beggan got the nod? It does appear to be something that influenced the selectors, who decided to place far less relevance on the value of Cluxton’s fast and pin-point restarts, which have seen him play the most decisive part in more scores than any other Dublin footballer. However, forensically breaking down games and then adding up Cluxton’s contributions to Dublin’s place in history as perhaps the greatest football team of all time would be wrong as well. More than anyone else, Cluxton has fathered this team. Jim Gavin is the brilliant creator, but Cluxton is Dublin’s true leader on the field. Ahead of Brian Fenton, James McCarthy and Jack McCaffrey. They were three of Dublin’s seven 2018 All-Stars and, individually, they were magnificent at all the right times, but only their ‘keeper watches over the entire team. In the last four years, one Kerry goalkeeper, two from Mayo and now a Monaghan native have been judged superior to Dublin’s captain in AllStar selections. There would appear to be a maddening obstinacy at work here. Particularly at a time when the All-Star selectors can do anything they want and name any player in any position of their choosing without explanation. This year, they named Colm Cavanagh as the best full-back in the country, even though he never played in the No.3 position. Sure the Tyrone midfielder spent a great deal of time in front of the No.3 position but he never wore the jersey or bore the direct responsibility of holding down the most pressurised position on the field. Naming Cavanagh there makes a mockery of the entire All-Star team, but if they decided to allow themselves such giddy foolishness, the selectors could just as easily have named Cluxton at right or left corner-back. There was nothing stopping them from completing a hugely extravagant act of incompetence.