There were days I thought Kerry was beyond me - Clifford

Pictured at Dún Chaoin Pier Road, West Kerry is (left to right) Comórtas chairman Pádraig Óg Ó Sé with Kerry footballers Paudie Clifford and Niamh Ní Chonchuir ahead of the Lidl Comórtas Peile Páidí Ó Sé 2022, the famed men's and ladies club Gaelic football festival which takes place all across the Dingle Peninsula this weekend.

It was two months shy of his 25th birthday that Paudie Clifford finally made his starting senior championship debut for Kerry last season.

Not that it was for a shortage of cheerleaders. Tomás Ó Sé, who saw first-hand his potential in UCC, had long been supporting his promotion to the panel. Billy Morgan was as big a fan and younger brother David made a public declaration in his favour after he starred for East Kerry in the 2019 county final. "It's hard to know what Peter Keane is thinking but you can't do much more besides getting man of the match in the county final.”

The elder Clifford believed he would eventually get his shot but admits to having some doubts. “Deep down, I always kind of thought I had a chance but yeah there would have been days alright when I thought probably that I’d stop kind of pursuing trying to play for Kerry.”

A broken leg put paid to any chances of a call-up in 2018 although he began to gain attention with his performances in a string of finals - the All-Ireland junior in July 2018, the Sigerson Cup in February ‘19 and the aforementioned Kerry SFC decider win over Dr Crokes.

As David added in that interview after that game, his sibling’s major issue had been his conditioning. He needed to bulk up. Says the man himself: “I did a lot of gym work, did a lot of speed work as well. That was probably the big thing, my body developed. I kind of always had the football, I just had to develop my body and that’s probably what changed. If it wasn't inter-county football I was playing, there's other things I could be doing so it wouldn't have been the end of the world either.”

Killarney Celtic had filled plenty of his time before the breakthrough while he also had spent a couple of summers abroad. Éamonn Fitzmaurice admitted Clifford should have been higher on his call sheet but the player understands why he wasn’t. “It probably would have been a year or two after that then that I probably might have felt that way (that he should have been called up) but at that stage I wasn’t on the radar enough, I hadn’t done enough, to be fair, at that stage.”

Clifford is one of the select if significant group of Kerry footballers who owe Morgan thanks for tutelage during his time in UCC. “Billy threw me in, gave me a chance with UCC. I had been in CIT for four years and went from there. He was great. Gave me a lot of advice but let me do my own thing at the same time. He was a great mentor, a great manager.

“The team we had was full of inter-county players. Cork players, Clare, a few Limerick, Tipp and Kerry. I got from playing with them, I learned a lot off them and realised that maybe I can play at this level. That was probably what changed.”

Paul Galvin, a player Clifford has regularly been likened to, also passed through UCC before he also made his starting SFC debut at the age of 24.

“There would have been some similarities alright, between me and Paul. He's obviously a player I've always looked up to. If I do a few of the things that he can do on the pitch, I'll be doing okay.

“I'm not a centre forward the whole time. I can do that, but I'm probably at my best when I'm given more of a free role; I can come in and out. I like to go back the field as well at times, if needed.”

It wasn’t until the McGrath Cup in January that Clifford started to move on from the All-Ireland semi-final defeat to Tyrone. “Tough,” he says of the aftermath from it. “Basically, tough the whole time until we came back, really. There is no other way of putting it.”

The group, he says, have identified where they went wrong in the game whereas he admits he wishes for another duel with Conor Meyler. “I’m looking forward to more challenges like that and maybe marking Meyler again at some stage.”

To Inniskeen, where Clifford in October 2020 made his first ever league appearance, unbeaten Kerry go on Sunday and the recruitment development manager is hoping for better conditions than those that plagued Sunday’s win over Donegal in Killarney.

“You wouldn’t mind the rain but the wind was crazy. It was tough to solo and with the wind it helped when you were kicking points but when the ball was kicked in it flew in like a rocket so it was very tough to play in. I suppose those sort of battles makes the team stronger.”

* Paudie Clifford was speaking at the launch of this weekend's Lidl Comortas Peile Páidí Ó Sé, which takes place in West Kerry this weekend.