David Clifford interview: 'It can be hard but I've been that young person meeting Kerry players so I understand what it means to them'

'If I am to look back from here, it's been a very fast eight years with Kerry' says Kingdom talisman who still likes the idea of a four-point goal for Gaelic football

ACCOLADES: PwC GAA/GPA Player of the Month for July in football, David Clifford of Kerry, with his award at PwC offices in Dublin.

David Clifford at 26. It's an interesting time to take stock, at the halfway point of an extraordinary inter-county football career.

It's eight years since Jack O'Shea, speaking after watching Clifford shoot 1-10 for the Kerry minors in the 2017 All-Ireland semi-final win over Cavan, said that the Fossa phenom was already equipped for senior duty.

The Kerry seniors were preparing to play Mayo and O'Shea said he'd start Clifford if he could, 'without a doubt'.

The rules prohibited it so a teenage Clifford stuck to minor duty and memorably hit Derry for 4-4 in that year's final.

"I'm looking forward to watching him for the next 10 years," said O'Shea at the time.

That decade has almost passed and Clifford last month claimed his second All-Ireland senior medal. He has seven Munster medals too, five All-Stars and will probably break new ground as the first three-time recipient of the Footballer of the Year award.

But Jacko is still well out in front in the All-Ireland medal count, with seven. So how has the first half of his career been for Clifford, is he happy with everything he has achieved at this stage?

"If I am to look back from here, it's been a very fast eight years with Kerry," said the PwC GAA/GPA Player of the Month for July in football.

"Jesus, it doesn't seem like I've been playing senior for that long. I still feel 21 or 22 but it's not the case anymore. I don't know, like, you want to be winning All-Irelands and you'd love to win it every year but I suppose you're kind of realising that that's not the case and you kind of understand how hard they are to win."

Clifford finished this year's Championship with 8-62 from nine games, comfortably the country's leading scorer with an average of just under 10 points per game. Even accounting for the 14 two-pointers he kicked - again, a record - it's outrageous scoring.

What the schoolteacher and father of one can say for certain is that he enjoyed this All-Ireland more than the 2022 win. It was 'relief' back then, just to finally get a medal, while it was more smiles and celebrations across the 2025 campaign. There were plenty of comments about just how much Clifford celebrated his points and goals.

"It probably just comes out, particularly the scores in Croke Park," he explained. "The crowd seemed to be behind us and if you can get a score and then get involved with the crowd, it just gives the crowd, and you, an extra lift again. So yeah, it probably just comes out of you at the time and sometimes you're probably over-celebrating and things but at the time it seems to be what's right."

Clifford cuts a relaxed figure as his mid-20s eye up his late-20s. Lead him down avenues that he doesn't wish to travel and he's confident enough to immediately cut you off with the same ruthlessness he showed Brendan McCole on All-Ireland final day.

For instance, he is asked if he'd fancy any new rules in Gaelic football.

"I think we might be better off leaving them alone with all the changes over the last year," he deadpanned.

He doesn't see much value in going deep into his apparent mentorship of the younger players in the Kerry panel either.

"I don't think I said much to them, to be honest."

Yet when Clifford felt a need mid-season to open up and encourage the supporters to get behind the team, he jumped on it. Ahead of the Armagh game, Clifford took the unusual step of publicly urging fans to turn out in big numbers at Croke Park.

Did he feel the supporters weren't fully engaged?

"Not really, there was a big crowd for the Meath game but we were brutal against Meath," he said. "As a team, we were miles off it. It would have been easy for people to stop coming after that game, that was the thing. It wasn't that they weren't behind us but it would have been easy to stop going to games after that because we were way off it. It wasn't good enough."

The no-show against Meath will eventually be forgotten. When the story of the 2025 Championship is reflected upon, it'll be all about the smiles and scores of Kerry's lethal talisman.

"There was a lot more joy and a lot more fun associated with it," acknowledged Clifford of 2025.

Because of the new rules?

"Obviously that made a massive difference," he nodded. "Look, the way the game had gone in the last few years, it became hard to get space. There weren't many kick-pass plays. So it was hard. You were trying to pick your way around it. At the time, maybe you didn't realise how hard it was. When you see the new game now, it's made a huge difference."

Back in May, Clifford was only half joking when he lamented how quickly the four-point goal trial had been jettisoned. "I was liking the sound of the four points for a goal," he said at the time.

The Football Review Committee had a look at it again recently. Presumably, given his eight goals in this year's Championship, Clifford would favour a rethink?

"Possibly, yeah," he said. "Because I suppose at the moment the difference between a two-pointer and a goal isn't hectic. But still, a goal is still...I know it's only worth one more than a two-pointer, but it's just a bit different."

And on the Clifford show will go, for the coming weeks and months with Fossa. After games, he will continue to be besieged by kids and autograph and selfie hunters, win or lose.

"It can be hard at times, after a loss maybe with Fossa or whatever, and the kids still want their photo," said Clifford. "To try and remove yourself from the loss and understand that the kids just want their photo or whatever it is. You kind of get used to it. I'm not perfect with it. Sometimes you're just not in the form for meeting people or taking photos or whatever but I try, if I can, I try to help them out. I was a young person meeting Kerry players not that long ago, so I understand what it brings to them."