Captain Clifford tears up script at bitter end as Kerry draw with Dubs

ALLIANZ NFL DIVISION 1 ROUND 1 Dublin 1-19 Kerry 1-19

WHEN the Kerry players didn’t stand to give the All-Ireland champions a guard of honour onto the pitch last Saturday evening we should have known we’d be swimming in choppy waters.

Maybe the practice of applauding the new All-Ireland champions on to the field for the first National League game the following year simply escaped the collective minds of the Kerry players; after all, it was all of four years ago late January 2016 - when a Kerry panel last clapped the All-Ireland champions on to a pitch, which also happened to be Dublin in Croke Park.

Maybe it was a genuine oversight, or perhaps a conscious and collective decision was made not to tug the forelock for the five-ina-row All-Ireland champions, just four and a half months after Kerry had to bend the knee to what was then Jim Gavin’s all-conquering team.

Whatever the reason - and we can’t be sure if Dublin even noticed the non-gesture or were bothered by it - it smacked of Kerry getting a psychological hit, however inconsequential, in good and early, as if to say ‘we’ll bow down to no one’. And if digging out an equalising point through the ice-cold boot of newly minted captain David Clifford, in the 80th minute was the result of that snub, then so be it.

If Dublin were miffed by Kerry’s disregard for this normal but unofficial piece of protocol they didn’t show it, not until the last few minutes of additional time played at the end of an increasingly feisty second half when they wrestled back the lead after slipping three points behind, and then did their level best to wrestle the victory by fair means or foul.

That the All-Ireland champions showed the best of what they are - their extended passage to passes between the 74th and 76th minutes to wind down the clock before Ciaran Kilkenny engineered a free kick, which Dean Rock converted - followed by the worst of what they are - Kilkenny’s cynical foul on Micheal Burns in the 78th minute that afforded Clifford that chance to level the scores at the death - merely added to the drama of another clutch match between these teams that couldn’t be separated by a cigarette paper.

That drama started in the first few seconds when both teams drew blood - literally - from each other with a nasty head clash between Sean O’Shea and Niall Scully, but after the requisite treatment both players went on to make significant contributions. Scores from Rock (two frees), Kilkenny, Conor McHugh and Kevin McManamon eased Dublin into a 0-5 to 0-1 lead before the returning James O’Donoghue clipped over the first of his three points and then Clifford skinned David Byrne with an audacious piece of skill before sliding the ball past Stephen Cluxton’s understudy, Evan Comerford, in the Dublin goal.

Brian Fenton kicked the first of four delicious first half points in the 20th minute but Kerry were motoring too by now, and scores from O’Donoghue (2), O’Shea (free) and Stephen O’Brien had the visitors 1-6 to 0-8 ahead before Brian Ó Beaglaoich and Shane Ryan bundled Rock over the in the square for a penalty, which the Ballymun man dispatched past Ryan on the half-hour mark.

By half time Kerry had lost Ó Beaglaoich and Adrian Spillane to injury, with Dublin defender Eric Lowndes in the sin bin, as the Dubs took a 1-10 to 1-9 lead to the break.

The second half was no less incident packed with Kerry’s spare man, Paul Murphy clipping over two early scores, Kilkenny forcing a smart save from Ryan, and Dublin’s Sean Bugler making his fourth entrance on to the field - after three blood sub cameos he then came on as a regulation replacement for McManamon in the 53rd minute.

Twelve minutes after leaving the sin bin, Lowndes was off for good for a yellow card foul on O’Brien, as a couple of O’Shea frees nudged Kerry 1-15 to 1-12 ahead. It was a lead they possibly could have defended to the very end had defender Graham O’Sullivan not been sin-binned for a body check on John Small. Thereafter everything was up for grabs.

Rock, James McCarthy, Kilkenny (two) and sub Aaron Byrne traded scores with O’Shea and Killian Spillane to make it 1-17 apiece on the 70th minute mark, and by the time O’Sullivan got back on the pitch Dublin were one ahead. Paul Geaney’s free levelled it again, before Dublin looked like they had worked a winner only to throw it away at the bitter end. AS we ambled away from Croke Park as the light declined, the closing line of Van Morrison’s Coney Island came to mind: Wouldn’t it be great if it was like this all the time.

Wouldn’t it indeed, but then we’re not sure if Kerry GAA’s clothing department would agree: how many ripped jerseys would they be willing to replace until the kit-men would begin to get cranky? For all the noise all week about Clifford getting the Kerry team captaincy the week he turned 21, perhaps it was no surprise that his was the jersey all the Dublin players wanted at the end of this at times

free-wheeling and at times feisty fixture. We just didn’t realise that every Dublin player wanted an actual piece of Clifford’s geansaí.

There’s every chance they will all get another chance or three before the year is out to, er, swap jerseys.