Kieran Shannon: Kerry football has found formula for best of all worlds
David Clifford of Fossa celebrates moments after the final whistle following his side’s victory over Kilcummin in the Kerry Petroleum Intermediate Club Football Championship final at Fitzgerald Stadium on Sunday. Photo: Tatyana McGough.
Up to last Sunday, one of the wonders and charms of the GAA over the past five or so years for me wasn’t just been able to watch David Clifford play football but being able to point out to people outside the sport – and remind those within it – that probably its greatest ever exponent wasn’t even playing for a senior club.
In almost every other sport outside the professional ranks, every player becomes a de facto free agent at the end of a season. Loyalty or returning to your current or native club isn’t a given. Especially for a player of Clifford’s talent.
If he was playing soccer, or basketball, or numerous other sports you could also mention, he’d have been forgiven for thinking – and undoubtedly been advised – even by his mid-teens that he should move on. Leave a Fossa and get himself in to a Dr Crokes just a couple of miles away on that ring road around Killarney. Play with better players. Be exposed to better and more proven coaching. Self-improvement is impossible without such self-advancement.
Such an ethos can have a corrosive effect on a club’s and a sport’s volunteers. They can totally understand how the move to a bigger club is best for the player. In most cases they only want what’s best for the kid. They get that he or she doesn’t belong to anyone. Yet with every parting another piece of you dies. You’re reminded of your place in the food chain. The cycle continues. You’re essentially a selling club, a stepping stone – fodder – for the big boys.
Even the GAA with its parish rule and the uniquely fierce attachment people feel for their local club isn’t immune from talented players transferring to bigger clubs. While football’s GOAT has remained with Fossa, hurling’s moved from Cloyne to Glen Rovers. We could cite a similar case in every county.
For decades the club in my own locality, Ballyea, tended to lose its better players to its neighbouring Clarecastle, one of the Clare’s traditional hurling superpowers. But when a Tony Griffin refused to bow to such overtures and stay with the club his brothers soldiered with, the flood stopped. The trend bucked. After Tony Griffin stayed, a Tony Kelly and every other hurler in the club stayed.
Across the GAA that is the norm. A Griffin and a Kelly and a Clifford stay with the clubs their fathers soldiered with and their schoolmates still play with because the unique structure of the sport facilitates it as much as its culture dictates it.
During their teenage players they all attended some of the most celebrated GAA academies in the country – St Brendan’s Killarney in Clifford’s case, St Flannan’s Ennis in Kelly’s and Griffin’s. They also got other opportunities to play with top talent without leaving their club or boys at home behind. And in Clifford’s case with the divisional system so strong and supported in his home county, he and his brother also got to play with East Kerry.
In other sports there isn’t that outlet. There isn’t that link. To play with better players, you’ve got to leave your own club.
There’s a lesson for other sports in that. Including, as it happens, hurling.
David Clifford has been able to play at the highest level of his sport even when Fossa were playing junior county football just four years ago. Just as any junior footballer in Kerry can play in the senior county championship by playing for his respective divisional team. Play well enough for them and you can play for Kerry too. Your opportunity is equal to your talent.
A hurler in Cavan or Mayo can’t say that though. You could be a Clifford there and remain a secret to the rest of Ireland, unless you understandably quit the small ball for the big one.
While it is no harm for William Maher to sit on John Meyler’s hurling advisory committee, he knows the rules of the game aren’t the sport’s biggest concern. It’s how the sport is structured outside the four white lines, not within it. The county system has largely worked well for football, but outside of Munster it is largely not working for hurling.
It should ape the model Kerry football has. Still allow that hurler from Cavan play for Cavan and his club. But also allow him to play for a Team Ulster (bar Antrim who are self-sufficient). Just as a Mayo hurler could play for a Team Connacht (bar Galway) as well as his club and county.
At the moment every footballer can play either Sam Maguire or Tailteann Cup football. The same should hold in hurling. Regardless of your geography you should be able to play either Liam MacCarthy or Joe McDonagh cup hurling. Financially and strategically support all the mid-tier Leinster counties – Westmeath, Meath, Kildare, Carlow, Laois – as well as a Kerry so they remain competitive Joe McDonagh – and potentially Liam MacCarthy – teams in their own right.
What’s the reason for not going with such a system? Because a top player from Louth, Longford and Wicklow don’t have an obvious Joe McDonagh team to play for? Like with everything, where there’s a will, there’s a way and a solution.
As it happens, so ridiculous is Clifford’s talent that I no longer am able to say that his club aren’t even senior. Thanks to his astonishing 15 points in the intermediate county final win over Kilcummin, they now are.
It wouldn’t have happened though if he hadn’t been exposed to playing with better players for Kerry, just as it obviously would never have happened for them if he’d have gone into a Dr Crokes.
Kerry football has found the formula where they get the best of all worlds.
Other sports – including hurling and Maher – should take note of it as well.
