FORMER Kerry captain Dara O Cinneide believes David Clifford has the temperament to handle the attention that will come his way throughout the rest of what promises to be a glittering career.
The Kingdom starlet, still only 21, is already one of the leading forwards in the country and has been targeted plenty of times already in his fledgling senior career as opposition defenders try and get a reaction from the former minor ace.
O Cinneide rarely displayed any emotion or rose to the bait during his career at club or county level, and while he feels Clifford is a different type of character, the An Ghaeltacht man expects the Fossa phenomenon will learn to take it all in his stride.
“I don’t think David’s the way somebody like a Declan O’Sullivan was. He’s one of these lads who has come up being told ‘don’t take any shit’, and so he doesn’t take any shit,” said O Cinneide, who led Kerry to the 2004 All-Ireland title.
“The way the game has gone now fellas can throw themselves down holding their faces and pretending that you’ve hit them - before you know it you have a red card and you mightn’t have deserved it. There will be a reaction, whereas with Declan there would have been no reaction.
“Sometimes it might be in his interest to get involved in a wrestling match, like last year against Jonny Cooper [in the drawn All-Ireland final]. He parks himself on the edge of the D and, despite Joe Brolly’s protestations, there was a foul there. I’m sure it wasn’t his intention to get Jonny Cooper sent off but it was two bookings and he was gone.
“Maurice Fitzgerald had a bit of that too. He’s probably the player that most resembles him in style, temperament, and Maurice was steely upstairs. He would have got a lot of attention after the ’97 final - Brian Lacey of Kildare in ’98 didn’t look at the ball, Ronan McCarthy in ’99 blaggarded the shit out of him and didn’t get punished for it.
“Maurice got fed up of that too and started dishing it out a bit. Clifford, I would say, models himself on Maurice - even the way he carries himself on the field with the hands on the hips, that languid style.
“It has all been tried at underage with him, and it didn’t work. Obviously the higher up the tree you go you’re going to get better defenders, but I’ve yet to see anybody really suss him out.”
Fitzgerald was one of the shining lights on the Kerry team O Cinneide graced during a 10 year career in green and gold, but he was also there to witness the emergence of Colm ‘Gooch’ Cooper.
The Kingdom have had a knack of producing quality forwards down the decades and, in Clifford, O Cinneide thinks they may now have unearthed “one of the best ever”.
“That’s what all the signposts would say so far.
“He is a serious footballer, a big, strong guy. I have no fear for Clifford because he is pure football; he loves the game. He’s so grounded, so steeped in it at home, his family, his culture, it’s so strong. He went to St Brendan’s College and he’s not anything other than a pure Gaelic footballer.
“He’s a guy who’s not depending on any one thing. Neither was the ‘Gooch’ or Maurice, but he’s in that lineage of once-in-a-generation type players that Kerry have been very fortunate to have. We would’ve played him at club level, we had two or three fellas around him and he still got 2-11.
“I’d hate to be marking him because he has these feints – these fake looks and fake passes. A few years ago I did a documentary with Pat Comer, we went down to Pairc Ui Chaoimh and I said to Pat ‘put a slow motion camera on Clifford’ and he got a lovely shot of him throwing a dummy in slow motion.
“You were just watching it going ‘Jesus’. The shift of legs, his comfort, his control in possession of the ball. The back didn’t know where he was – it was a joy to behold.”
