We forget. We forget these players are amateur. Whatever the talking points and debates of Sunday’s All-Ireland final, nobody in Croke Park cannot say that they witnessed a few moments of genuine wonder. Pressure comes in various forms.
For most of his adult life, Kerry’s David Clifford has, in addition to honouring and bettering his sublime talent, carried the pressure of leading the county’s generation of starlets to an All-Ireland title that was proving worryingly elusive. Yesterday, he did that with a haul of 0-8 that demonstrated his range of talents.
At the other end of the field, another player was operating under a heavy obligation to play out of his skin. For years, Shane Walsh seemed like the perfect emblem for Galway football in that he was clearly infused with a rare brilliance. And that talent was maddeningly inconsistent. The consensus was that if Galway were to have a hope of living with Kerry then the Kilkerrin-Clonberne man had to give a special display.
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He finished with 0-9 after what was probably the best All-Ireland display by a player on a losing team in the modern game. He fired four points from play and two of those were out and out beauties: shots so true that the celebrations began as soon as the kick left his boot. Left foot. Right foot. All kinds of Kerry cover. It didn’t matter. On a day when Kerry’s newly minted defensive machine shut down Galway’s forward line, Walsh carried the maroon cause.
“He was good, he was exceptional, in fairness to him,” said Pádraic Joyce, his manager and last Galway man to kick those numbers in an All-Ireland: 0-9 in the second half against Meath and 0-10 in total in the final of 2001. But that day was a procession for the maroon men. This was a potboiler from the start.
“He kicked nine points, left foot and right foot, he was really, really good,” Joyce continued. “We probably should have got a little bit more ball to him towards the end of the game, but he was exceptional. I know he was questioned about not scoring from play the last couple of games, but he played to a system and a game plan that we had. Today he did the same thing, but we played him higher up top today and he did untold damage up there. He was really, really good.”
Gaelic football sometimes gives itself a hard time in its punditry and analysis. It is players like Walsh who step out of the coaching orthodoxy of highly-organised defences to make it seem as if they are kicking ball for the pure uncontainable joy of it.
“I won’t be around forever but when I’m there I’ll enjoy it and try and do what you were doing growing up,” he said in an interview at the outset of the championship.”
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Walsh is 29. Next year will be his 10th season with Galway. They are a division-one team and a young side on the up. Joyce has managed to tap into that wonderful, haughty tradition of theirs. It didn’t matter to Galway whether the public thought they belonged in Kerry’s company here. They knew that they did. And it showed. The trick now is to build on this.
“Yeah, the county needs to use as a springboard, there [are] a lot of good, ambitious young players in the group,” Joyce said afterwards. “And even our older players aren’t that old. We need to use it to come back stronger and see what departments we can get better in. Since the 8th of December last year, I started training these fellas and I can’t fault them for any bit of effort.
“They trained when they were supposed to train and played when they are supposed to play. They just fell short at the end of the day and it is a huge lesson for us but we are using it as a springboard to create something special going forward.”
Walsh is a purist. In that same interview, he referenced learning a trick — using the opposite hand and foot to solo the ball — from “a lad that is a couple of years younger than me. David Clifford ... I don’t know if you know him?”
Here they were on the same pitch on the biggest football day of the year and it was, at times, a sublime sight. Kerry and Clifford’s ascension to the sanctity of an All-Ireland has been an uneven process. The ambition for Galway now will be to use the prime of Shane Walsh to see if their team can follow the same path.
Read all the news, analysis and comment on Kerry’s win, here
