I miss-hit the ball and it went out over the sideline...
It wasn’t the time to miss a kick-out, but it was down to me
THE GAME’S the thing for David Clarke. It might rhyme with the tragic-tinged narrative which so seductively attaches itself to the Mayo footballers that the 34-year-old returns today for one final pursuit of the medal which has been dangled in front of his nose in the five All-Ireland finals he has played in.
Clarke will be 35 in November and he does not have to be told that his window of opportunity is closing hard, but he is keen to bury the notion that the only thing bringing him back is the bittersweet fear of missing out on the honour which he has pursued so hard for so long.
It has literally swallowed up half his life.
Clarke was a 17-year-old when he entered a Mayo dressing room for the first time. He was a substitute when they defeated Galway in the 2001 League final, but if it finishes without a Celtic cross it will not leave the kind of hole in his career which he admits he once envisaged.
‘A few years ago I might have thought like that but I am in a space at the moment where I just try to make the most of every game I play,’ he insists. ‘I am a bit older now, married with children, football is not the be all and end all.
‘For a while there if you were not on the team, it nearly defined you as a person or if you were on the team, you might be inclined to think that defined you too. But as you get a bit older you find that there are more important things in life.’
It is not just the perspective that a two-and-half-year old toddler and a four-month old baby gift – they have helped him frame football’s place in his world. But he has found that baby-steps also apply to the game. Rather than obsessing about chasing glory, Clarke has focused on developing his own game with extraordinary success. Even though it is 13 years since he made his Championship debut against Roscommon, today’s game in Castlebar will represent just his 43rd Championship appearance.
It is a modest number for a player of such longevity — less than half the 91 appearances which Stephen Cluxton has chalked up in 17 seasons — but it underlines the resolve which Clarke has showed to stay the course.
Goalkeepers, by the nature of the position, tend not to be easily shifted, but since he became a regular panellist in 2004, he has seen five others – Peter Burke, Fintan Ruddy, John Healy, Kenneth O’Malley and Robbie Hennelly – all play between the posts in Championship football for Mayo. He once had the surreal experience of being both a sub for club and county — dropped for the 2005 All-Ireland club final as Ballina chose to go with Healy, a fate that would also befall him 11 years later when Mayo plumbed for Hennelly for the 2016 All-Ireland final replay.
He has had periods out of the team through injury — a hamstring tear in 2013 saw him out in the cold for the bones of two seasons – while he fought a losing battle with current understudy Robbie Hennelly for much of this decade.
It was the latter’s superior kicking boot which provided him with the edge in that selection duel, but rather than zip up his boot bag and walk away, Clarke simply exchanged it for a better one.
‘There are probably more goalkeepers now who have a similar kicking style to Stephen Cluxton than when Stephen started off so he showed the way. I was an older style of goalkeeper and I have had to learn off the way he conducts the game now. But all I can be is the best I can be, I can’t be a bad imitation of Stephen Cluxton.
‘Peter Burke was our goalkeeping coach for six years and he had a big impact on the way I changed my game. Up to 2012 I was wearing rugby boots and he gradually got me to change so that I could work on different kinds of kick-out. It is still a work in progress.’
Perhaps, but that progress is there for all to see. For the past two seasons, he has out-balloted Cluxton to be named the best goalkeeper in the game.
He admitted this week that he had not anticipated his nomination for Player of the Year in 2017, but it was a matter of process as Cluxton had also been shortlisted to avoid any pre-determination of the All-Star award.
And there was no disputing he merited that. Shot-stopping has always been his strength, which might go some way to explaining the fact that he has kept 48 clean sheets in his 110 League and Championship appearances.
That comes in at a 44 per cent shut-out rate and when it matters most that number goes even higher with 22 clean sheets in 42 Championship games, which sees that rate climb to 52 per cent.
Simply put, he keeps a clean sheet in every other Championship game he plays in and while that number is down to a multitude of factors, he is by a distance the biggest.
Last summer he made 10 point blank stops, many of which, such as the finger-tip save from Cork’s Tom Clancy and his smothering of Kerry’s Jack Barry, ensured Mayo went
‘YOU CAN’T DRIVE LOOKING BACKWARDS. YOU GET ON IT WITH IT.’
as far as the final. But what really staggered last summer were his kicking stats, which were compiled by Mayo journalist Edwin McGreal, which revealed that despite having to go long with 35 per cent of his restarts, he still had an overall 80 per cent completion rate. And you didn’t need a calculator to see how he cut the feet from under Kerry in last year’s semi-final replay, following a foot-perfect first-half from the kicking tee by defying the Kingdom’s second-half press when Mayo lost just one of their own restarts. And he maintained that form right through to the final, where even despite that late fluffed kick he out-kicked Cluxton, with Mayo retaining 82 per cent of their kick-outs in the final compared to Dublin’s 76 per cent.
Still, such is life; it is that final missed kick that will be remembered, as it drifted out over the side-line.
‘Look, I am my own biggest critic and I was hugely disappointed and embarrassed by the kick but you can’t dwell on it.
‘It is not the time that you would want to miss a kick-out. I miss-hit the ball and it went out over the side-line.
‘It was down to me, it was poor execution.
‘But it is done and there is no point lying in bed at night thinking about it because it is not going to get any better by doing that. You just get on with it because you can’t drive the car looking backwards.’
And forward is the only way he is going. This may or may not be the last spin around the block, but he is not even thinking that way.
‘I think it is more from the years that I was not playing that I derive my satisfaction from still playing now. I still enjoy playing, probably not for the social element or the craic in the dressing room. I just like getting out and training, trying to do better.
‘There were a few years there where I thought I would not be back but as long as the body is right I will keep on.’