Of course, for even top players, every day is a school day, but soon it will resume as David Clifford’s reality. A teacher in St Brendan’s in Killarney, the front-runner for Footballer of the Year, which would be his third such accolade, was talking to media having won one of the Player of the Month awards on Monday.
“We’re back to school on Thursday, so I’ve been looking forward to it in one sense,” he said, referencing the “normality” of the routine.
His major inputs into Kerry’s All-Ireland success a few weeks behind him, he compared the medal with his first, three years ago, and like a lot of players, knocked more satisfaction out of the second.
“I think the first one was probably a lot of relief, because you hadn’t won one. Personally, I enjoyed this a lot more. There was a lot more joy and a lot more fun associated with it.
RM Block
The dry statistics of his season tell some tale. Top-scorer for the championship with 8-62 and top-scorer from play, 8-48, he played a significant role for Kerry all the way through the knockout stages, scoring 3-7, 0-7, 0-9 and 1-9 in the four matches.
He outlined the influence of the FRC rules, specifically the way Kerry had embraced them.
“The way the game had gone in the last few years, it became hard to get space, and there wasn’t many kick-pass plays. So, it was hard. You were trying to kind of pick your way around it, and at the time maybe you didn’t realise how hard it was, but when you see the new game now, it’s made a huge difference.
“The three-up and the fact that you have bodies in the top half of the pitch when you turn over a ball, that you’re able to kick-pass: we would have felt that suited us ... We thought the way they were written up would have suited us all right.”
However, he feels that club football in Kerry might have been better under the previous rules but accepts the quality will probably improve as the championship progresses.
The pace of Kerry’s adaptation was most noticeable in the use of two-pointers, a score the team used sparingly in the early part of the year as they ended up top goal scorers in the league. By the championship that had altered, and by Croke Park it had changed utterly.
“I came back late, so it was kind of straight back into matches. Week to week during the league, it’s kind of hard to work on anything because of recovery between games. So, we didn’t put massive attention on two-pointers.
“But as the weather got better and the ball was travelling a bit farther through the air, we kind of worked on them a bit. Still, probably hitting the net is a bit different than a two-pointer. It just gives you a nice lift, but in the end we started to work on two-pointers.”
Maybe not surprisingly for the championship’s top goal scorer, he’s open to the idea of the recently revived four-point goal, given the shrinking differentials caused by two-pointers, although he still believes that green flags remain important.
“I know it’s only worth a point more than a two-pointer, but it’s just a bit different. It gives the crowd (and) the team just a different lift.”
On the subject of crowds, in an unusual intervention after the Cavan match, Clifford engaged directly with supporters in a broadcast interview, calling on them to get behind the team.
He acknowledges that their defeat to Meath in the group was a “brutal” display that “made it easy” for supporters to walk away, but says the engagement of the crowd has a big influence.
“Ah, it’s huge. It just seems to amplify every score you get. If you kick a two-pointer, it feels like it’s worth five points to you because the crowd get behind you. You have the crowd then facing the next kick-out and the opposition goalie’s listening to that crowd. It makes a huge difference.
“Obviously, I’d never spoken about it. We’d never asked people to come out before. It’s a nice feeling when the county is all rowing in one direction. This year, that was definitely the case. Since that game, that’s been the case. There’s a lot of goodwill and people are just genuinely happy to see us doing well, which is nice.”
Now roughly half way through his career, were he to retire at 34, he is asked whether he feels on course to achieve what he might have expected at the start of his footballing career.
“It’s not something I’ve really thought about. I suppose if I’m to look back from here, it’s been a very fast eight years with Kerry. It doesn’t seem like I’ve been playing senior for that long. I still feel 21 or 22, but it’s not the case any more.
“I don’t know – you want to be winning All-Irelands and you’d love to win it every year, but I suppose you’re kind of realising that that’s not the case, and you understand how hard they are to win, so you cherish the ones we’ve won a bit more maybe.”
