Five things we learned...

Sometimes you need to believe your own eyes

There was an air of unreality to it as we sat in Fitzgerald Stadium early in the afternoon on Munster final day. It was all so easy for the Kerry minors. They outclassed Clare so comprehensively that, if we’re being honest, we probably disregarded the significance of the result.

In our minds it became more about how desperately poor Clare were and less about how brilliant Kerry were. When a game is over after a handful of minutes it’s hard to take much notice of anything that happens thereafter. It becomes a box-ticking and note-taking exercise for the denizens of the press box. Now, of course, in hindsight we can see that it portended more than we gave it credit for at the time. Clare weren’t that bad a side. Even if they did come through the easier side of the Munster championship draw, the Banner did pretty alright against Dublin in the quarter-final afterwards.

Kerry beat Clare by twenty four points. They beat Derry by twenty four points. The evidence for their brilliance was there all along.

AFL will come knocking

It’s not something we particularly wanted to write about during the season and particularly in the build-up to the final, but it’s pretty obvious that David Clifford is going to become a target of several Aussie Rules clubs over the coming weeks, months and, who knows, maybe even years.

Don’t take our word for it. Look at the following Tweet and accompanying article from the AFL: “David Clifford, an 18-year-old Gaelic footballer, will come onto the radar of several AFL clubs.” What we should stress here is that we have no idea if Clifford has been contacted by a club or even been asked to attend one of these combines. We have no idea whether he’s interested or not. Every second person you talk to tells you something different. The best advice would be to take all of that chatter with a very large pinch of salt. The only person who truly knows what David Clifford is thinking is David Clifford.

Clifford is ready for senior football

We suppose this very much depends on whether or not Clifford will still be around next summer. For now we’ve got to assume he will be and that being the case, the argument of fast-tracking him to the senior team is incredibly compelling.

As a matter of fact we’re of the opinion that it’s a no-brainer. The Fossa man is no wee slip of a lad. Sure senior football is a huge step up from the minor game and nobody should expect Clifford to score 4-4 in a game of senior intercounty football, but if anybody can make the step up he can.

Jack McCaffrey made his Dublin debut at 19. Colm Cooper made his senior debut a year out of minors. It’s not unprecedented. For that matter the fact he wouldn’t be allowed play for the Under 20s if he played senior championship football next season shouldn’t be a concern – same goes for Seán O’Shea – if they’re good enough (based on how they perform in the league), they’re old enough and there are plenty other young footballers of promise in the county who could take up the slack and would benefit from the exposure.

Keane is a top quality boss

To be fair we didn’t learn this on Sunday, but after Sunday the evidence for it becomes even more compelling. The team he produced, the management team he put in place, shows that this guy is incredibly shrewd. Remember how St Marys cut a swathe through the Munster and All Ireland club junior championships. It’s reminiscent of how dominant Kerry were this year. Yes this was an exceptional bunch of Kerry footballers, but not every manager could get them playing to the standard they did. On top of that there was hype and expectation and all the rest of it and it didn’t seem to make one bit of a difference to these young players. Peter Keane knows what he’s doing.