JOE BROLLY: The footballing terminator

Like Arnold Schwarzenegger, the footballing terminator does not need to rest. He does not need to recuperate. He does not get injured. He does not experience nerves or fear.

He is not needy. He does not need pep talks or an arm around his shoulder.

Last week, he scored 0-15 in the Kerry intermediate final, despite being double and triple marked and in spite of the fact that Kilcummin’s strategy was based on stopping him. No misses. No wides. A reel of his scores online is reminiscent of a match day performance by Maradona, without the mistakes. In the semi-final, Fossa played Beaufort, coached by former Kerry manager Peter Keane.

Again, Keane structured his team to stifle Clifford. They dropped deep into the space where Clifford operates.

He was marked in rotation by various defenders to ensure no single individual became depressed and began yearning for a consoling hug from his mammy and a cup of hot, sweet tea.

As the game progressed, Kerry centre half Mike Breen marked him. None of it made any difference. The terminator is oblivious to being in the eye of the storm, though as Jim Gavin is fond of saying, in a storm, the eye is the safest place.

With Fossa two points down in extra time with a few minutes to go, Clifford got the ball in the right corner, with Breen wrapped around him. David dummied, changed direction, stepped back, forward, feinted right, then left. Breen, favoured for the number six All-Star spot, looked like a walrus clinging to a boat in high seas.

Then, the final touch before launch. A step forward, then a step back outside the arc and a high booming shot. Breen, on the ground now, flat on his belly, didn’t even need to look up. He knew. A minute later, death duly came for Beaufort, Clifford kicking a glorious winning point, bringing his tally to 0-16. Only this time, like the All-Ireland final, there was one wide, which will puzzle his software programmers.

In the quarter final against Listowel Emmets, he scored 0-12. His club championship tally was 1-63 in six games, an average of 11 points per game. You can see a reel of his scores from every match. They are a thing of wonder.

His championship performances for Kerry this year are, extraordinarily, more or less identical to his club performances, the only difference being that he scored far more goals for Kerry, which I put down to club teams basing their entire game plan on preventing him from scoring. Which simply meant that he switched to long range shooting mode.

For Kerry, he scored 7-50 in eight games, an average of nine points per game. But as in the club championship, his best was reserved for the knockout phase, destroying Tyrone (1-8), making the decisive contribution against Dublin (1-5) and scoring a magnificent 1-6 in the final despite being starved of possession.

“Clifford wasn’t great,” said the Meath man beside me as his friend nodded in agreement, which merely underlines how incredible he is. 0-9 in an All-Ireland final puts him joint fourth in the all-time All-Ireland final top scoring list, with himself, 2025 final v Donegal (all 0-9 from play), Shane Walsh, 2022 final (David only managed 0-8 that day), and Maurice Fitzgerald, 1997 final.

Mikey Sheehy and Jimmy Keaveney in number one spot with 2-6, each scored penalties in their haul. The ‘Bomber’ Liston and Peter Canavan are joint second on 0-11. The Bomber got his 3-2 in the days you could throw the ball into the net and Canavan scored 0-10 from frees.

In the 2023 All-Ireland junior final against Stewartstown Hards, sorry Harps, six red cards were dished out in the course of a coordinated attack on Clifford, who scored 0-11 (eight from play in the one point era) before he was sent off for depriving the Stewartstown corner back of his clothes, his boots and his motorcycle. In that junior championship, he scored 5-87 in 10 games, averaging 10.2 points per game.

This year (subject to a computer malfunction) he will win the intermediate All-Ireland. Next year, Fossa will be senior for the first time in their history, and there will be a whole new group of corner backs made to look like walruses clinging to a boat.

It was Canavan’s 0-11 in Tyrone’s 0-12 tally in the 1995 final that prompted the joke Q. What’s the difference between Peter Canavan and a black taxi? A. A black taxi only carries seven. Which applies to David Clifford every day he goes out.

Hasta la vista baby.