Kevin McStay: Momentous day will be remembered as the Clifford-Walsh final

In the end, the game we love delivered.

It was a sensational All-Ireland final. The closeness of the scoring kept the outcome in doubt almost to the last minute or two.

But the real desire, the absolute need, the imperative for victory was underlined when, not once but twice, as the game threatened to go to Galway, Kerry produced two bursts which produced a deluge of four points.

Each period underlined the composure and the depths they were willing to explore to force the match and the day in their favour. They would not be denied.

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[ David Clifford: ‘This isn’t the end of us by any means. We are just getting started’ ]

And within the game, I’ve no doubt we got two of the great displays in the grand history of All-Ireland final day.

David Clifford ended up with the spoils. But Shane Walsh went to the end of the earth to win this this game for Galway. Nine points, left and right, from play, a 45, and other scores from frees. He brought Tom O’Sullivan to places he had not visited even in his nightmares.

And only for a fair bit of double teaming on Walsh, he would have hit double digits. When last did that happen in a final? When his manager Pádraic Joyce kicked 10 back in 2001.

Why was it not a winning contribution by Walsh? Because at the other end another young man decided enough was enough and the rocky start to his preordained stellar career finished here. Like Walsh, David Clifford was in a mood to win the thing on his own if he had to.

He rowed in with eight beauties: Marks, frees, from play, right and left . . . simply sublime. Though Kerry won the day, I am sure it will be remembered as the Clifford – Walsh final.

The game has changed. Tactically, structurally and in terms of the participants, the athleticism and fitness levels required to compete are stratospheric.

Walk back though this year’s championship in your head and recall the Ulster final . . . structured mass defence, pressure to turn over the opposition ball carrier and then the big steal leading to instant transition and a shot at goal; think back to the games where many minutes of lateral hand-passing going nowhere other than moving the defence out of their preferred positions in the hope a gap will appear; and think back to last Sunday when we got a bit of everything.

Perhaps it was the July date but this was the strangest of All-Ireland final weekends. Nobody around town for the build-up but as many tickets on offer as ever I saw for a game of this magnitude. A friend wondered if we had come up the wrong day.

And with no minor game or other curtain-raiser events that anybody was aware of, the masses loitered around the hotel, the new focal point in lieu of the pitch as the latter provides little of consequence on it until the senior game throws in.

This must change. Get the U-20 (or U-19 if that is the road it takes) or the Tailteann Cup final or the U-17 final onto the programme. Stop this daftness. Entertain supporters who have paid €90 for stand tickets and €170 for Premium seats.

It’s our football festival. Get the marquee day right. I know the argument will be there were extra tickets to go around to the competing counties. But All-Ireland final day is for the GAA family and all must be allowed chase the tickets. It is after all the biggest day of the Irish sporting calendar.

Some things did not change. On my way to the ground, plenty of supporters let me know they are not happy with my commentary work. No complaints! I am fair game. An irate Kerry man scolded me for “spending five feckin’ minutes trying to get Seanie Shea red carded”. I found it difficult to convince him the referee does not hear me commentating in his ear during the game.

[ Kerry player ratings: David Clifford produces a masterclass in Gaelic football ]

Shortly afterwards, a Galway woman wondered how I can be neutral, being from the bad borderlands. “I know you’re a Rossie,” she tells me. ”But don’t you have Mayo roots? You won’t want us to win”.

I cannot argue with that logic. Or, if I did, we would still be standing on Jones Road.

Inside the stadium, the hour before the match was sort of lost and forlorn.

Without a pre-match, the jubilee teams’ appearance feels like bit of an add-on. The clár an lae had them chalked down for a 2.12pm entrance. The great champions of 1995, 1996 and 1997 . . . well over the hour before throw-in. The seagulls recognised a few old faces. Very few others engaged because they were outside on Jones Road and the surrounds. Is this the way we want to honour our great winning teams? Again, there is surely a better way.

But the day was building. The promised rain stayed away. It was warm. The teams finally appeared. And the arena was jammed tight as the parade off. What a magnificent sight to behold. The noise, the colour, the expectation. The two teams striding around Croke Park chests out and walking their full height. I was thinking back to those moments I’d lived over 30 years earlier . . . the stress, the tension, the concentration required to make sure you are ready for what is ahead.

I met nobody pre-game who said Galway would win but I met a few Galway lads who made decent arguments as to how and why they might. But not with any great conviction. Kerry at 1/3 looked more than reasonable odds such was the level of confidence surrounding their prospects.

Galway reversed a season’s trend and opened well. Walsh was on fire, and Kerry accumulated wides at a rate rarely if ever witnessed in a final they play in. The match ups looked right from the westerners’ viewpoint . . . especially Liam Silke on Seán O’Shea and the unheralded Jack Glynn was doing a more than decent job on Paudie Clifford. All that might be expected with the David Clifford and Sean Kelly dance was that the Galway defender might restrict him to a handful at most.

But Clifford the Younger was in no mood to have the game move away from him by half time and so piled in with 0-4. He’d add the same again in the second half!

The problem for Galway was simple enough; they did not score enough in that opening period and Walsh never got the support he should have on the scoreboard from his fellow forwards.

And by half-time Kerry (Cliffford?) were right with them, trailing by only the single point. It felt like Galway had missed a trick. But what trick?

Perhaps the Johnny Heaney goal chance (it ended up a point) might have made the difference it felt it should have been. A brilliant block by Stephen O’Brien and the ball flew over instead of under. Was that the break Joyce’s team needed?

And so to half-time. Kerry were playing poorly and some players not playing at all really. Big calls were required of the managements. And this is where the bench comes into matters in these big games.

We all realised early in the championship season that Galway’s management wanted to avoid substitutions as much as possible because their bench was simply not ready for the championship of 2022. Kerry had a slightly stronger bench to call on. But not much.

So it was a big call to slip both Paul Geaney and David Moran off. Their two most experienced players, their veterans. Perhaps Moran was injured; Geaney, despite good possession and good movement, just could not find the posts bar a lovely mark early on.

[ Keith Duggan: Galway’s Shane Walsh virtuoso display did not deserve to lose final ]

This is simply why Jack O’Connor, Kerry’s serial winning manager, was called back to base. He knows the game, he knows what’s needed and when it’s needed. And his currency is so strong he backs himself every time to make the correct calls.

The two Spillanes raced on to the pitch when Kerry re-emerged. They were ready to energise the group and drive on using the Spillane athleticism to get around the park and cover ground until a few chances presented themselves.

And Killian duly landed two hugely valuable points.

The game was absolutely in the balance when the referee threw in the ball for the second half. And it remained there until a major momentum swing in the 66th minute. A big call by referee Seán Hurson infuriated the Galway crowd and certainly had steam coming out the ears of Joyce at the press conference afterwards.

Was it a foul? It was certainly the critical call of that second half. Galway had just drawn level (0-16 apiece) and now a turnover forced by Damien Comer at the vertex of Hill and Cusack saw the superb John Daly emerge from the posse with the ball. Comer was not pushed, as many in Galway felt, as far as I could see.

In real time, it looked very likely that Daly had struggled to get free and forward (because he had slipped after gaining possession) from the Kerry tackler (Killian Spillane) and in desperation, caught his hand, an old trick to buy a handy free out. Except Hurson, enjoying an exemplary outing in his first final, spotted the infringement and correctly gave the free in to Kerry. A big call. But it looked the correct one.

The slow-motion replays tend to confirm his immediate decision-making was correct. Of course, David Clifford slotted the free and now, Kerry had the momentum. Small margins. The fabled inches.

Kerry smell blood and are willing to cut even deeper. They reeled off three quick points, growing in belief and composure by the second. The old scene. Sam number 38 was on the way home. In lovely summer sunshine.

[ Galway ratings: Shane Walsh puts in one of the great losing displays in a final ]

Many of us smile at the idea that Kerry found themselves in famine mode in the build up to their latest win. In their history, the gap between wins has always been narrow compared to most of the rest of us. Their longest wait ever was 11 years, followed by another gap of 10 years and the latest one which was at eight in the lead up to last Sunday’s final.

But my sense is Kerry had worked themselves into a frenzy in the need to end the barren spell this year. And they circled the crucial game against Dublin on the calendar. A win here would guarantee an All-Ireland, they felt.

And that’s pretty much how it played out except that Galway threw the kitchen sink at them in an effort to shatter that conviction that this was their year. And they almost made Kerry doubt.

So it’s still July and the All-Ireland is over. The good news, the eternal truth of season 2022, as franked by Shane Walsh and David Clifford is this: skill remains the separator when all other matters are reasonably equal.

On Sunday we were privileged to watch two of the most skilful players I’ve ever seen strut their stuff. Those two boys were magnificent.

The glory rests for now with Kerry. Deserved champions. Winners over Mayo, Dublin and last Sunday, Galway. It’s a title of substance. I had no real sense that a new dynasty has announced itself. In time, we may recognise that this is where the new era started.

But similar to the demand that their star minors win their senior All-Ireland before they are allowed enter their pantheon, it will be the same standard now before this group are compared to the great Kerry teams of yesteryear. They must come back. They must win more. And stay hungry for more after that. For that is their standard.

Kevin McStay’s end of season awards

All-Ireland final Man of the Match

Jointly awarded to Shane Walsh & David Clifford (in that order!) with honourable mention to Cillian McDaid

Player of the Year

David Clifford with both Shane Walsh and Damien Comer a close second

Team of the Year

Shane Ryan

Liam Silke, Brendan Rogers, Chrissey McKaigue

Gavin White, John Daly, James McCarthy

Cillian McDaid, Conor Glass

Shane Walsh, Seán O’Shea, Ciarân Kilkenny

Paudie Clifford, David Clifford, Damien Comer