Kieran Shannon: David Clifford is truly on the path to greatness
Kerry’s David Clifford celebrates a score in the Allianz Football League Division 1 final at Croke Park on Sunday. Picture: Inpho/James Crombie
Shortly after Jack O’Connor stepped out of the Kerry job for the first but not last time, his successor – and predecessor – Pat O’Shea recommended some reading material to his players: a book by a Pat Williams on the phenomenon that was Michael Jordan called How To Be Like Mike.
One of its nuggets was Jordan’s awareness and obligation that every time he performed there was someone who was seeing him in the flesh for the first and possibly only time in their lives. Maybe they lived in whatever town he was playing in that night. Or maybe they had saved up and flown in from some other part of the States or the world. Wherever they were from, he did not want to disappoint. Not only had they wanted to say “I saw Michael Joran play” but he wanted them to be able to add “and he was great.”
This week 25 years ago I got to see Jordan play in the flesh. My brother Damien was living in Chicago at the time and was able to secure a couple of tickets for a regular-season game against the Boston Celtics.
On the night Jordan and the Bulls didn’t have to extend themselves. Boston at the time were in their Rick Pitino ‘Larry Bird is not walking through that door’ phase, and the Bulls won pulling up, and pulling Jordan; he finished up only playing 27 minutes, a full 10 minutes less than he normally would.
When he had been on the floor though he had not disappointed. He missed only three of the 11 field shots he put up. He dunked for us. We got to experience the ‘FROM NORTH CAROLINA’ introduction for ourselves. And my abiding memory of the night was even from the cheap seats being able to tangibly sense his laser focus in the pre-match warmup, as he took and made a series of turnaround jumpers at game speed and intensity.
In subsequent years I also got to see Kobe in the flesh. And LeBron. And Messi. On each occasion I and some loved ones were there more to see them than their team or the game. Few other team sport athletes come into that bracket. I’m glad that I can now tell my children that I saw Cantona, Keane, Zidane, Lomu, the 2007 Ronaldo in the flesh, yet as magnificent as they each were even then they didn’t dwarf the fixture itself. They were another reason I went but not the main reason I went. I was there to see or cover United, Ireland, Juve, the All Blacks.
I’ve also been blessed to see upclose countless brilliant GAA players. Last week with Cork being in a national hurling league final gave me reason to interview Seán Óg Ó hAilpín, (still) the last Cork captain to lift senior national silverware, and the chat conjured up just how privileged my generation was to witness in real time the epic games his old team had against the likes of Waterford and Ken McGrath. Yet unless you’re from those counties, it tends to be you rather than a younger follower who’ll raise the matter of whether or not you saw a McGrath or an Ó hAilpín in the flesh. For all their brilliance they don’t quite have that status reserved for only the best of the best, the way so many of us would and still ask our elders, “Tell us, did you see Ring play?”
No other player in the history of the GAA has had that appeal: where tens of thousands would flock to Croke Park on St Patrick’s Day just to say they saw Christy Ring play. There is an argument that Henry Shefflin matched or even surpassed the Corkman’s greatness, proof of Ring’s own claim that the best hurlers were yet to come. Yet even at the apex of King Henry’s supremacy, were we there to see him more than we were to see the match itself?
Gaelic football doesn’t quite have as obvious GOAT contenders the way other sports do; while there’ll be those who’ll claim it’s Mick O’Connell or Seán Purcell, there are few under-50s who even know who the Galway man was or who would have O’Connell at midfield on their greatest XV ever. Jack O’Shea was like Shefflin: the greatest on a great team of greats, but not someone who you necessarily went to see in his own right. The same with whichever Dub of your choosing: Brogan, Connolly, Fenton, McCarthy, Cluxton. They may have been your favourite Rolling Stone but they were still just a member of the Rolling Stones, not Michael Jackson.
Colm Cooper is probably the nearest footballer of the last 30 years to having that sort of transcendent appeal or at least talent. Ever since his first summer of 2002, he was must-see, because he could do things we hadn’t seen. Whereas comparable talents like Maurice Fitzgerald and Peter Canavan were almost hidden secrets for a few barren years, Gooch never was. He was always in Croke Park, always on Broadway, and even when he played off it, playing and winning so much with Dr Crokes, he would invariably do something that made you glad you were there to see it for yourself.
It’s five years today that the news broke that Cooper had retired from inter-county football. At the time we thought it would take years, for the sport, let alone the county, to have another Colm Cooper walk through that door. Yet that is what we and Kerry are now looking at in the form of David Clifford.
Time will tell if Clifford will be another Cooper or the football equivalent of a Shefflin or a Jordan. While that’s his third league he’s now won, he’s yet to even win an All Ireland. In terms of winning or longevity he has a long way to go before he’s in the orbit of a Cooper or Shefflin. But already he meets or even surpasses them on the Excitement ‘Holy God, Did He Just Do That/Did I Just See that?’ scale, much like Air Jordan circa ’87-90 in his pre-championship days.
Every day he’s a personal highlight reel. At the end of last season this column made the case why he should have won his first footballer of the year award, not just his third All Star; outside of a subdued Munster final display when Kerry didn’t need him anyway to dispose of Cork, he put on a show each and every day, averaging 1-5 per game (4.87 points from play) for the season. This year he hasn’t even had an off-day. Over his eight league games the least he scored was two points from play, below in Newbridge; both points were sublime efforts that alone made it worth staying up to watch League Sunday. In the two league games he started on the bench he’d come off it each time to score a goal. Of the 5-22 he scored across the eight games, all but four points were from play. Ridiculous – Jordan-esque – scoring.
Like Ring and Billy the Kid, he’ll make his victims-markers famous, or infamous. Last Sunday was poor Padraig O’Hora’s turn. A lot has been made of O’Hora’s verbals, seemingly triggered and incensed by what transpired when his teammate Jordan Flynn required treatment, but little about how the Ballina man gently patted Clifford after he’d skinned him for a goal. O’Hora knew and acknowledged he was in the orbit of an extraordinary talent. So should we all.
Last Sunday my 10-year-old son went to Croke Park for three reasons. One: because with Covid he hadn’t seen a football game in the place since Clifford and Kerry beat Tyrone in the 2019 All Ireland semi-final. Two: to watch and support Mayo, the county his mother is from. And three because he wanted to see Clifford again, upclose, being a fellow left-footed inside forward. With the atmosphere and Mayo being so flat, only one reason validated the trip but it was enough. When it comes to Clifford he can’t get enough.
Because already he has a sense that this could be football’s Ring question, its grandfather-grandson chat: Did you ever see him play? Yes, I did – and he was great.
