By John Harrington

Kerry manager, Jack O’Connor, revealed that star forward David Clifford will need a scan on the ankle injury he sustained in today’s All-Ireland SFC semi-final win over Mayo.

Clifford was a doubt before the game because of a calf-strain but sustained a new injury early in the match when he seemed to jar his ankle while inadvertently standing on the ball.

He played on until the 67th minute but looked in some discomfort at times.

“He jarred his ankle,” said O’Connor. “It was curtailing him and in the heat of battle the adrenalin keeps you going but I imagine he will be very sore tomorrow.

“Obviously David was struggling through much of the first half. The boys worked on him at half-time but obviously he has an injury and, sure, look, we'll have to wait and see and get it scanned and see what's the story."

O’Connor considered taking Clifford off earlier in the match than he did but was glad they kept him on the pitch because his first-half goal came at a crucial juncture in the match.

“We did, absolutely (consider taking him off). But he's the kind of a player you'd nearly give the benefit of the doubt to most of the time.

"He's not just an ordinary player and he showed it with the goal he scored which was a serious goal because it came at a time when we were struggling to get scores and we were struggling to get a foot-hold on the game. That's the class of the man, that's what he can do.”

Clifford won’t be Kerry’s only injury doubt for the All-Ireland SFC semi-final against Dublin in two weeks time. O’Connor revealed that Jack Barry (calf strain) and Adrian Spillane (hamstring strain) are also in a race against time to prove their fitness for that match.

O’Connor knows his team will have to play much better against Dublin than they managed against Mayo. They won comfortably in the end, but he felt they looked rusty after four weeks without a match.

“In a way I suppose it was a perfect storm,” he said. “We were four weeks without a game and Mayo played two games in the interim. Plus the slippery conditions made it difficult to get up the pace of it.

“Not taking away from that, I thought we were rusty in the first half. We gave away an awful lot of ball.

“I don't have the stats to hand but we must have given away nine or 10 possession in our forward line that allowed Mayo to counter-attack and we can't afford to do that the next day because with the running power that Dublin have they'll punish you at the other end.

“We have to tidy things upfront. I thought we gave away a lot of ball and that was probably to do with the conditions as well. Mayo have tough, pacy backs and they were contesting the ball but I think we need to be a bit cleverer with the delivery to our forwards.

“We were forcing it a bit and in those conditions any sort of a hand in and the ball is going to spill and we spilled a lot it in the first half.”

One obvious positive was the performance of veteran midfield David Moran who scored two points from play and got on a lot of ball.

“Huge. I think he kicked at least two points. Two points and really rolled back the years. Like, we didn’t think there were 70 minutes in him. He thought so himself by the way and he proved it out there. It’s a great asset.

“Look, we’ll need everybody against the Dubs because they have huge running power, huge pace all over the field, we’ll need everybody.

“The bottom line here is these Kerry players have been yearning to get a cut at the Dubs from as far back as three years ago. They lost an All-Ireland out there that they would feel they could have won.

“We certainly won’t be lacking motivation but neither will Dublin. Dublin will want to show that they’re back as good as ever, the team that won the six-in-a-row.

“They had a blip last year and they look to have rediscovered the hunger and the drive that got them to that six in a row.”