FOUR years ago, Stephen Cluxton became the oldest player ever to win an Allstar and the first goalkeeper in history to win Footballer of the Year.
If you’d asked 100 people to name the best goalkeeper in the game at any point in the last 15 years, none would have had to mull for too long before giving the Dublin number one’s name.
How many Allstars are enough to reflect his standing? He’s on six at the minute, one behind Mikey Sheehy, two short of Colm Cooper and three behind Pat Spillane, who holds football’s record of nine.
He’s already level with Peter Canavan, Jack O’Shea, Ger Power and Ciaran Kilkenny. He’s long been at home in that company.
Yet the indignation of overlooking him in the years that he didn’t win the Allstar weighs heavy.
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Often times it was Dublin’s brilliance that prevented him. He simply had nothing to do.
Goalkeeping is Cluxton’s field. He has cultivated the land and planted the seeds that have grown into Shane Ryan and Rory Beggan and Niall Morgan and the rest. They all, in some way, owe their impact on football to him.
But just like David Clifford and the Footballer of the Year award, you can’t give it to him every year. Rightly or wrongly, he’ll be judged to a different standard, just as Cluxton has perhaps been.
There’ll be years you can take it off him and years you can’t. This is one of the years you can take it off him, so that’s probably what they’ll do.
On last week’s popular Football Pod, his former team-mate Paddy Andrews launched the campaign to have Cluxton named as 2023’s Footballer of the Year, ahead of Clifford or James McCarthy.
Former Mayo manager James Horan labelled the Dublin goalkeeper “a shoo-in” for an Allstar.
Except he isn’t.
Shane Ryan was the best goalkeeper in Ireland this year – a position ironically solidified by Kerry’s decision to meekly drop off Cluxton’s kickout in the All-Ireland final.
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Shane Ryan's 2023 championship
Kickouts taken: 159
Contested: 81 (51%)
Uncontested: 78 (49%)
Contested kickouts won: 67 (83%)
Contested kickouts lost: 14 (17%)
Uncontested kickouts won: 78 (100%)
Goals conceded: 3
Saves made: 9
Goal-saving interceptions: 1
High balls won: 7/8
Errors: 0
Scores: 0-1
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Dublin won all 23 of their restarts that day. Andrews described Cluxton’s performance as “immaculate”. In a throwback to 2011 he nailed two brilliant scores in the first half, one of them the game’s opener.
Yet Kerry only pushed up on his kickouts seven times in the entire game. They did it man-to-man and with the way Dublin set up in a line up the middle of the field, breaking wide to either side, it gave Cluxton his favoured pocket out to his right so easily.
He did the needful and he made it look far easier than it is but compared to his opposite number, it was a completely stress-free day.
Dublin contested eight of Shane Ryan’s ten first-half kickouts and six out of 14 in the second period. He still came away with an 88 per cent success rate.
In every facet across the year, Cluxton was excellent. Moreso than in the past, the Parnells man – who didn’t play their opening game against Laois – was kept busy in the goalkeeping sense.
At 41, he’s lost none of his sharpness. Cluxton’s save from Conall Grimes against Louth, right up beneath the bar at the near post, was outstanding.
He made brilliant blocks from Kildare’s Jack Robinson in Leinster, Ciaran Murtagh against Roscommon and Diarmuid O’Connor in the Mayo game, and a good low save from Darragh Kirwin in the round-robin win over Kildare.
In that sense, it was one of Cluxton’s very best seasons. He could have done nothing more about Paul Geaney’s goal in the final, standing up really well and only getting undone by a suspect second hop that the Dingle man rescued through an obscure rule.
But where Cluxton was good, Ryan matched him. And where Cluxton was great, Ryan bettered him.
The Kerry ‘keeper could have done less still about Paddy Small’s deflected goal in the final.
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Across the year, he made nine saves to Cluxton’s five. Just two of those were in Munster, both against Clare.
Four of them were in his incredible performance against Mayo when he was the only thing that stopped them taking a hiding in Killarney.
His biggest save, though, was the solid right forearm he extended to deny Gareth McKinless in the semi-final though. At 1-12 apiece with 20 minutes to go, that was the game.
He’s a big man, shown by his dominance of the skies, and he uses that frame brilliantly in terms of his shot-stopping. It’s not flashy but it’s very effective.
Cluxton got away with one against Monaghan, allowing Conor McManus’ harmless dropping shot to slip through his hands, only to gratefully see it fall wide of the net behind him.
And yet forget the All-Ireland final, that was his best performance off the tee.
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Stephen Cluxton's 2023 championship
Kickouts taken: 142
Contested: 70 (49%)
Uncontested: 72 (51%)
Contested kickouts won: 47 (67%)
Contested kickouts lost: 23 (33%)
Uncontested kickouts won: 72 (100%)
Goals conceded: 1
Saves made: 5
Goal-saving interceptions: 0
High balls won: 5/7
Errors: 1
Scores: 0-2 (0-1f, 0-1 45)
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Monaghan made him work. They went after him hard and only let three kickouts away uncontested all day yet he lost just two in 80-plus minutes.
Most of the goalkeeper’s work is about kicking now. Cluxton has a telepathic understanding with Brian Howard, who finds ways to occupy that pocket along the right touchline when Dublin really need a ball. They’re so good at manufacturing ways out of bother without you even realising they’re doing it.
Across the season, though, Dublin won 67% of their restarts when the opposition squeezed up on them.
Kerry, despite having no Fentonesque figure to bail them out if things got tight, won 83% of the kickouts that Shane Ryan’s receivers had either zonal or man-to-man company for. Of those, 70% were won clean, indicating he was hitting his target right on the meat.
Those are remarkable numbers, above anything we’ve seen from an Allstar goalkeeper in recent years.
Compare his 83% success rate on contested kickouts with his own 64% tally last year, Raymond Galligan’s 66% (2020) or Rory Beggan’s 52% in 2018 and it gives you a feel for Ryan’s accuracy this term.
The kickout numbers alone would almost earn Shane Ryan an Allstar but then throw in his nine saves and the back-pedalling grab to deny an incoming Ruairi Canavan a simple goal in the win over Tyrone, his complete command of the aerial battle in his square (see his 74th minute punch right under the crossbar as the Derry bodies flooded in) and the hinch-assisted score he kicked in the semi-final.
Stephen Cluxton was a huge part of Dublin’s success in 2023, bringing a calmness, an eye-of-the-needle accuracy and a level of decision making off the tee that they just hadn’t had in his absence.
It was one of his best years, which is remarkable given his age and how long he’d been away.
But you can only judge each year on its own merits.
Shane Ryan’s year was off the charts.
There’s no coherent argument you can make against the numbers or the impact he had in big moments.
Kerry’s number one has to be this year’s Allstar goalkeeper.
