Clifford not shocked by Down's class against Donegal
David Clifford, Kerry footballer, pictured in Croke Park at SuperValu’s launch of the Senior Football Championship. SuperValu has launched the “Real Nourishment” campaign to improve nutrition confidence. New research conducted by SuperValu shows Irish parents with children involved in sport and over 400 intercounty GAA players highlights that sourcing trusted information on nutritional support for performance is a shared challenge across all levels.
By John Harrington
David Clifford wasn’t all that shocked Down produced the upset of the football championship so far when beating newly minted League champions Donegal.
The previous week the Down players chartered a plane to Farranfore to play Kerry in a behind doors challenge match and Clifford saw enough in that game to know they were primed to give Donegal plenty of it.
“Not really, no,” said Clifford when asked was he surprised by Down’s win.
“We had a good workout against them, they have a couple of unbelievable players, so I think...look, I was never trying to predict who was going to win the game, but I think everyone had a fair idea that they were going to give Donegal a good go, yeah.”
Clifford raised some eye-brows last year when he suggested seven teams were capable of winning the Sam Maguire Cup.
Such has been the unpredictability of this year’s championship his view that there’s a wide field of contenders seems to be vindicated.
“If I said seven last year, there must be nine or ten this year because you have a couple more teams that are into it,” says Clifford.
“I think there isn't even much of a difference now between Division 1 and 2, so there's a huge variety of teams, yeah.
“Obviously, interesting results across the board. I suppose it just shows you, with the level of…you call them the so-called lower teams in the divisions, they're obviously coming up to an excellent level now.”
A notable feature of this year’s football championship to date has been the scarcity of really tight matches.
We have not yet had a situation where a match has been level going into the final minute with a team in possession of the ball having an opportunity to engineer one last scoring opportunity before the hooter sounds.
Last year the game continued after the hooter sounded until the ball went dead, whereas this year it ends as soon as the hooter sounds.
That means teams can’t comfortably play keep-ball until a scoring opportunity presents itself like Kerry famously did in last year’s All-Ireland Final when Clifford kicked a two-pointer after the hooter had sounded for half-time.
But even though the rule has changed, he still thinks that teams might yet play to the hooter in similar situations and try to get off a ‘buzzer beater’.
“It was kind of an under-the-radar tweak really, kind of in the first game you realised that this has been changed,” says Clifford of the hooter protocol. “It's similar, but I suppose the last play might start a bit sooner.
“It might start in the 68th minute now as opposed to waiting until the 70th. I'd say there’s similar teams are trying to work it to have the last shot, that's it really. You probably can't take as much time maybe to really set up a shot.
“You could see some scores that you'd never see because if there's 20 seconds on the clock, you kind of have to throw the boot at it. There could actually be a few great scores as the summer goes on. You can just imagine a buzzer-beater type score.”
