DAVID CLIFFORD ALREADY MEASURING UP TO FOOTBALLING ICONS
Still only 22, David Clifford is a once in a generation talent whose remarkable rate of progress is rapidly rewriting the record books
WITH language as lyrical as the footballer he is describing, Dara O Cinneide breaks into laughter when he is reminded of what Maurice Fitzgerald’s ‘gatch’ looked like in the printed word. O Cinneide, in what was the first of 140 appearances for the Kingdom, came off the bench in a League game in Ballina against Mayo in the spring of 1994, and for the first of many times bore witness to Fitzgerald’s genius that afternoon when the Caherciveen man chipped Pat Reape for Kerry’s only goal, with the ball trickling over the line as if weighted to measure like a Phil Mickleson gap wedge.
‘I remember just standing there with my mouth open and the following day Keith Duggan had this line describing Maurice’s reaction to his goal that went “and Fitzgerald turned away looking troubled,” chuckles O Cinneide.
That is ‘gatch’ for you live and unplugged; how the truly gifted carry themselves almost apologetically, with a level of restrained emotion that is completely out of kilter with the stroke of genius they have just delivered.
Matt Connor, Offaly’s wonderplayer of the 70’s/80’s and one of O Cinneide’s boyhood heroes, carried himself the same way and, watching last weekend as he scored a goal that felt more like it was sourced off Brazilian sand than Fossa grass, O Cinneide is convinced David Clifford has it too.
Just turned 22 with a few months, fears that the hype heaped on Clifford’s shoulders by comparing him with stellar forwards from the county’s storied past have long dissipated on the basis that t-shirt has long been bought.
Ever since he hit a ridiculous goal when scoring 2-5 for St Brendan’s in the 2016
Hogan Cup final, football has waited and watched for evidence of pressureinduced cracks. He was the most hyped minor footballer ever in the build-up to the 2017 All-Ireland final and he responded by scoring 4-4 against Derry.
He defied the frenzy that greeted his debut senior season and Kerry’s failure to make it past the Super 8’s in ’18, by winning a first AllStar and young player of the year gong.
Any fears that the second album might prove a difficulty were killed with a follow-up All-Star 12 months later.
The sense is he has passed that comparison stage and the sculptors at the top of McGuillicuddy Reeks, who have been charged with delivering a Mount Rushmore brief, have already taken to chiselling out his likeness alongside Mikey Sheehy, Colm ‘Gooch’ Cooper and Fitzgerald.
They are all the same but different, all dusted with genius but armed with the capacity to draw blood where it hurts most from those who cross their paths. O’Cinneide saw Sheehy through a boy’s eyes in the 70’s, played with both Fitzgerald and Gooch, while he is now witnessing Clifford through the commentary box window, and believes that they are more like a set of terrible twins than quadruplets.
And even though they are from four different eras, fate has conspired to ensure that generational lines have been blurred, with Sheehy part of the Kerry management team when Gooch was in his pomp, while Fitzgerald’s role in Peter Keane’s set-up has been beefed up to that of forwards coach. ‘I think that is a happy coincidence more than anything but you would love to hear a conversation between Maurice and David,’ says O’Cinneide. ‘Essentially they are two South Kerrymen (Clifford’s father, Dermot, hails from Derrynane in the Iveragh peninsula) and you don’t get their level of skill without having a serious dedication to the craft, so I think they are two of a kind.
‘I always though the same about Gooch and Mikey; there was a mutual appreciation evident there and I would have grabbed that from the few conversations I heard.
‘Maurice might as well have played ice hockey because it is just a different game now, even a different game than the Gooch played.
‘You always assume that Mikey Sheehy and Matt Connor would have been brilliant players in our generation and that Maurice would have been a brilliant player in Gooch’s generation, and that if Gooch was 21, he would playing a starring role in David’s time.’
Statistics, of course, can be used to set some sort of measuring tape across the generational spectrum, but they can also be a crude tool and not entirely accurate.
What it does tell is that after 29 games in which he has scored 9-117, Clifford is more than holding his own, with only Fitzgerald posting a higher average scoring return per game of 5.1 points to his 4.9
The difference – and match reportage detail in Sheehy’s era and in the early part of Fitzgerald’s career did not extend to specifying scores from open play and placed balls – is that the Caherciveen man went straight into the Kerry team in 1988 as the primary free-taker, while Clifford is very much secondary in that role.
Indeed, Clifford is not even Kerry’s current scorer in chief. That honour falling to Sean O’Shea, who made his senior debut with Clifford against Donegal in 2018, having amassed 4-190 in his 34 games to date.
That is an average of almost six points (5.9) per game and when Clifford’s average is taken into consideration, Kerry’s two chief scoring forwards combined are hitting an average of 11 points per game – the kind of numbers designed to spook the opposition. However, the breakdown in how the two players have racked up those tallies contrast drastically.
Just 4-45 of Shea’s total scores have come from open play, an average of 1.7 points per game and just 23% of his entire tally.
But 8-78 of Clifford’s 9-117 has come from play, an average of 3.5 points per game and a whopping 71% of his tally.
And it is that ability to score so heavily from open play that may set him apart, not just from Kerry players of the past, but perhaps even all-time.
Already his scoring returns at this stage of his career are ahead of the likes of O’Connor, Tyrone legend Peter Canavan and Donegal’s iconic captain Michael Murphy.
And from here, the only way should be up? Perhaps, not, because already as a marked man – not all of it within the rules – he is likely to receive more of the kind of attention that should ensure a brake will be put on his scoring returns.
‘I have been watching David since he was 15/16 and he has always been double marked. I remember we (Gaeltacht) played Fossa in a minor final a couple of years ago and we eventually won, but David got something like 2-11.
‘We put two or three lads around him and he got frustrated in the end because of the treatment he was getting and got sent-off.
‘He got sent-off against Tyrone in Edendork as well last year because there are only so many times you can put your hands out to the linesman and the referee.
‘The Gooch learned that over the years, while Brian Lacey and Ronan McCarthy in 98 and ’99 were on Maurice and it was outrageous.
‘Now, if you were in a Kildare or Cork jersey those days you would have said they did a great job, and unfortunately David will have 10 years like that ahead of him.
‘It sounds like I am blowing a trumpet for another Kerryman, but
‘MAURICE WOULD HAVE BEEN BRILLIANT IN GOOCH’S GENERATION’
I would argue the same thing for Con O’Callaghan.
‘I do not think it should be tolerated, that our outstanding players can be subjected to that kind of treatment just because they are that good,’ argues O’Cinneide.
The other side is that the fun could be squeezed out of the game in times where the pressure on the players is not always on the pitch.
The closest Sheehy got to being a commercial commodity was as part of a collective draped over a washing machine in an advert that offended the amateur ethos so treasured by the rule book classes, but times have changed and with that so have the intrusive demands on players’ time.
‘In the commercial area the modern player would be very much sought after but the flip side to that, and I would have had first-hand experience of it, is that it also extends to voluntary stuff.
‘You can bet David gets a phone call to do stuff for charity and how many times does that happen, “David can you give us a 30-second video for this, can you open this, can you launch that?” There is a lot of pulling out of top players these days and you really hope that they can compartmentalise that side and that the football is the joyful part of the week for them.’
Those fears aside, though, the future is his?
It is not just his numbers that are screaming that message at the world, it is the pictures he has already painted.
That drag-back goal is just one more on a rapidly-expanding list of jaw-dropping moments, like that Hogan Cup final goal, or that sliver of space he found to fire in that equalising goal against Monaghan in 2018, or the casual manner in which he opened up Dublin’s defence in the league opener in last year’s league clash.
The best, then?
It is far too early for that chatter and O’Cinneide concedes that, when that query is made of him, he still has the same answer.
‘In those 3am pub conversations when you are down to picking your top 10 albums of all time, I always put Maurice at number one.
‘People will say that I am blinded by that because he put an All-Ireland medal in my back pocket in ’97.
‘I think it is partly because Maurice was at his prime at a time when Kerry football was never more vilified.
‘The fear before ’97 was that Maurice would retire without a medal. He is different to the rest in that he was playing in a period of despair.
‘But the thing is I thought that the notes Maurice hit as a footballer, other players were incapable of hitting, and David is falling into that bracket now.’
If so, it could provide the symphony for Kerry football to dance again.
‘DAVID HAS BEEN DOUBLE MARKED SINCE HE WAS A KID OF 15 OR 16’