His clutch control is unrivalled
IN David Clifford, Kerry don’t just have the best footballer in the country, but the best clutch player out there.
Time and again, in the big, pressure moments, he recognises that his team needs him, this is my moment, give me the ball.
To have that mindset and the confidence to pull it off so consistently is very rare.
Even the best of forwards can go missing when the pressure is on. Clifford, on the other hand, is like the Dark Knight flying into Gotham when Kerry send out the bat signal.
I was watching the Kerry-mayo game in a bar last Saturday night and, as the play was developing ahead of the winning score, I was scanning all over the TV screen for Clifford’s positioning.
The first sighting was one of relief as he was ambling around the middle. He then went out of shot and, as the play was developing, I was still reasonably satisfied.
The second sighting, of course, was him flying onto the ball just inside the Mayo 45. The barman could have knocked the TV off there and then because the rest was inevitable.
While the brilliance is to be admired, you could argue Kerry are going to need a plan B and C come summer.
I’m not a basketball fan but I loved the Last Dance on the Chicago Bulls and Michael Jordan, who bailed them out time after time.
But there was a crucial game in the 1993 play-offs when, in the dying seconds, they used Jordan as a decoy because all the focus was on him.
The ball gets slipped out to the free man, John Paxson, who throws a three-pointer to win the game.
That’s as far as my basketball knowledge extends but I do feel there is some relevance here for Kerry.
Opposition defences will swarm Clifford, who could be the decoy for his brother Paudie or Sean O’shea getting a vital shot off. Or it could be an unlikely hero, similar to Domhnaill O’donovan for Clare’s hurlers in 2013.
Having said all that, the ball will probably still find its way to the genius that is David Clifford, and it usually only ends one way.