David Clifford runs the show as UL secure passage Sigerson Cup last four

UL’s David Clifford celebrates scoring the first goal of the game. Picture: INPHO/Ryan Byrne

University of Limerick 2-12 Queens University Belfast 0-13

David Clifford had three days to stew over Kerry’s draw with Kildare in Newbridge.

Okay, so he scored two points from play in a league opener that ended in stalemate rather than defeat, but he spent large parts of that rank Sunday in St Conleth’s Park struggling in vain to escape the attentions of Mick O’Grady and his pals.

And the locals had lapped every bit of that up.

Queens felt the full force of that frustration on the GAA’s main pitch at the Sports Campus Ireland facility last night. Though Clifford spent half-a-dozen second-half minutes off the field with a blood injury, it was the Belfast university that suffered the knock-out blow.

The 2-4 claimed by the Kingdom's talisman in this Sigerson Cup quarter-final brings his war chest for the colleges campaign now to a frightening 5-16 from just three games against Sligo IT, Letterkenny IT and a QUB side that made this one far more interesting than many expected.

In terms of its closeness as a contest anyway.

The setting could have hardly been better — a magnificent facility, superb playing surface and a still and dry night with a small crowd — and yet so much of the opening half was about as distracting as a plough horse struggling through glutinous mud.

Nine of the 13 scores put up in a period elongated by a long delay for the injured Queens defender Ryan Conroy came from frees. Some of them were things of beauty in their own right, just not the sort of thing that had made anyone brave Dublin's rush-hour traffic.

Clifford supplied the rare sprinkles of stardust, as he so often does. Marked tightly by Peter Fagan of Down, he had Armagh’s Arden McAvoy to contend with as a front-lying sweeper to boot, and so chances were hard to come by in the opening half.

But, if a few sniffs were all he got for a long while, then that was all he needed.

The first scent he cottoned on to produced a goal on 13 minutes after No 13 turned his marker inside out and opted for a shot to the low right-hand corner. Maybe 99% of us would have seen the screen of bodies in front and tapped it over the bar for an easy point.

The second was in injury time and it was even better. A pedestrian team move meandering east-west, a rush from himself out to meet the ball, a sprint towards the sideline after he took possession and a whip of the right boot over his shoulder from downtown.

Three Queens defenders couldn’t have been tighter on him if they had applied Loctite.

That was 1-1 deposited in two blinks of the eye. The only other solid sighting of the man from Fossa in that first-half was less affirming, his late hit on McAvoy eventually persuading referee David Gough to produce a yellow from his pocket.

He wasn’t perfect after the break either. A couple of wides dirtied his bib but you couldn’t really crib when he continued to produce moments of magic. He added 1-3 to his locker in that spell and it could have been 2-2 but for the sake of a few inches.

It wasn’t a one-man show by any means. Fellow Kerryman Donal O’Sullivan deserves a special mention having chipped in with a vital six points, five of them from frees, but there was no disputing whose name was top of the bill.

And to think that Queens had done so well for so long.

Their solid shape and discipline was enough to lead them into the interval with a 0-8 to 1-4 lead but the game was wrenched from them in the first 20 minutes of the second-half when the favourites landed 1-7 against a solitary point.

There was a mini-revival towards the end as the Belfast side rattled off three points on the spin to reduce the arrears to five with a handful of minutes to go, but a badly skewed free from the otherwise excellent Conor Turbitt all but let the air out of it.

One young lad from Clare captured the night for posterity when his dad begged a snap of him alongside Clifford. For almost everyone else this is a game that might as well have never happened. Just one more entry in the 23-year old’s burgeoning Book of Wonders.

Scorers for UL: D Clifford (2-4, 0-1 ‘45’); D O’Sullivan (0-6, 0-5f); E McMahon (0-2).

Scorers for QUB: C Turbitt (0-8, 0-5f and 0-1 ‘45’); K Hughes (0-2); P Brooks, C Love and P Finnegan (all 0-1).

UL: C Flaherty (Galway); P Towey (Mayo), C Donnelly (Offaly), P Maher (Limerick); J Coyne, (Mayo) S Powter (Cork), E McLaughlin (Mayo); C Dempsey (Mayo), D Walsh (Clare); C Downes (Clare), E McMahon (Clare), O Looney (Clare); D Clifford (Kerry), D Gray (Kildare), D O’Sullivan (Kerry).

Subs: P Walsh (Kerry) for Clifford (43-49, blood, and for O’Sullivan 56); C Igoe (Mayo) for Gray (52); R O’Reilly (Mayo) for Looney (59).

QUEENS: E Mulholland (Armagh); S Bolger (Laois), R Conroy (Tyrone), P Fagan (Down); G Brown (Limerick), M Murnaghan (Tyrone), P Brooks (Down); R Donnolly (Tyrone); T Bogue (Fermanagh); F Canavan (Down), O Mallon (Tyrone), B Campbell (Down); K Hughes (Armagh), C Turbitt (Armagh), A McAvoy (Armagh).

Subs: S McCarthy (Armagh) for Conroy (7); C Gorman (Down) for Hughes (48); C Love (Fermanagh) for Mallon (52); P Finnegan (Antrim) for Canavan (56).

Referee: D Gough (Meath).