'The split season definitely helped' - Paudie Clifford hails Fossa focus thanks to new format

The Kerry side claimed All-Ireland glory on Sunday.

BROTHERS IN ARMS: David Clifford, left, and Paudie Clifford with the Corn Seamróga Chraobh Mháirtín. Picture: Piaras Ó Mídheach/Sportsfile

Paudie Clifford has echoed his brother David in heralding the split season, declaring it is “definitely the way to go”.

His younger sibling spoke last week of how the new scheduling of the Gaelic football year made it easier to focus on separate teams and Clifford couldn’t agree more. 

“The split season definitely helped. You were obviously able to go all out with Kerry and then it wasn’t as intense from August on.

“You could pick and choose trainings a bit more but then still go at it in the club season and you’re there all the time. That makes a big difference whereas before you had a club month in April, coming and going and training one of the nights in the week with Kerry and then with Fossa another night. It just didn’t work. The split season is definitely the way to go and it massively helped us this year.” 

David spoke of feeling more of an onus to win this final than last July’s against Galway and Paudie indicated the same. 

“There was pressure but there was pressure on all of us, pressure on all the panel. Obviously, it was a big day for the club. I suppose a lot of clubs down through the years realise it and we might not ever be back up here with the club again.” 

An All-Ireland winner with county and club in the one season, the Cliffords are the first in Kerry to pull off the double since Bryan Sheehan in 2009-10. Paudie says the two successes aren’t comparable.

“It’s totally different winning it with the people you grew up with, your friends. It seemed so far away at the start of the year because you’ve to jump so many hurdles whereas at inter-county the No1 goal is to try and win the All-Ireland. Here, you’re thinking, ‘We must win the first round of the county championship then keep going on’ so it seems so far away so it’s an unbelievable feeling.” 

Speaking after the win over Stewartstown and his speech in which he criticised referee Thomas Murphy for sending him off, Clifford was still at a loss for why he was punished. “I don’t know. I pulled him (Gerard O’Neill) to the ground alright so maybe a black but red I don’t know how that came about.” 

He waved off the mouth injury he picked up as a result of Anton Coyle’s late, high elbow on him in additional time. “You know, there’s obviously a lot of emotion in a game like that so I wouldn’t read too much into it. There was a bit of needle and things like that. I don’t think anything major happened. When emotions are high and you want to win so badly, things like that might happen.

“Stewartstown were a footballing team. They’re a footballing team like us. They were very, very powerful runners and a very good team, very impressed with them. I don’t know how we got over the line but it didn’t look great at half-time.” 

Clifford now plans to have some downtime before returning to the Kerry camp at some point during the Allianz League. Asked about his body, he admitted: “It’s tired alright. It’s been a long year but we’ll probably take a few weeks off now and get straight back into it with Kerry. We’ll take a few weeks just to recharge the batteries and then be ready to go again for Kerry whenever’s needed.”