A rotten elbow the worst of six red cards as David Clifford gets Fossa over the line to cap incredible year

To Croke Park for the junior and intermediate club finals. A day like this is the GAA with its work-from-home clothes on. The pitch is a bit scruffy looking, the going is bit raggedy around the edges, the fuses are that bit shorter than they would be in more polite company. Two Kerry clubs against two Tyrone clubs. What did you think was going to happen?

When the convoys scattered north and south around teatime, Fossa and Rathmore went home with the trophies, Stewartstown and Galbally with regrets. Ultimately, the countymen made the difference. Fossa had David and Paudie Clifford, Rathmore had Shane Ryan and Paul Murphy. Granted, Ryan is the Kerry goalkeeper but he put in a star turn in the forward line here, scoring 1-3 from play and taking the man of the match honours by day’s end. Neither Tyrone team could lay claim to that sort of stardust.

None starrier, of course, than the younger Clifford, who racked up 0-11 of Fossa’s 0-19 in the junior final to round off an incredible year. Starting with a McGrath Cup game for Kerry on January 5th, 2022, he played 34 games, scored 20-187 and won eight trophies from nine competitions. Pipe and slippers time, finally.

“When the calendar year finished up, you’re still struggling to reflect,” Clifford said afterwards. “Because we had this – not hanging over us but to look forward to I suppose. It feels like a season’s end now. Three or four weeks now to refresh the mind and we’ll be ready to go again.

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“This is slightly different [to intercounty] because you have the pressure of everything. When you’re going playing with Kerry you have the pressure of performing yourself, whereas here you have the pressure of the whole thing. Having dad so closely involved, being the chairman as well, you can see what it means to him. So the pressure is different, it’s very intense. But there’s a total outpouring of emotion then when you do get over the line.”

For a long stretch of this one, Clifford didn’t have it all his own way. Not by any measure. Indeed, Stewartstown were patently the better side throughout the first half, playing entertaining, hard-running football to which Fossa had no real answer. The best forward on the pitch in that opening half-hour wasn’t Clifford, it was the Stewartstown full forward Gareth Devlin.

Devlin is what junior football ought to be. He’s 35, he isn’t chiselled to within an inch of his life, he skates around looking like a pickpocket in search of a mark. He had a spell on the fringes of the Tyrone panel back in the day but never felt the raw need to throw himself completely into it and settled happily into club life.

The sole survivor from Stewartstown’s last All-Ireland final in 2005, Devlin played as if he was making up for 17 years of angst here. He had 1-3 on the board by half-time and it ran the full gamut – a point from play with his right, a point from play with his left, a fisted goal and a pointed free. Fossa couldn’t handle him.

[ Chasing David Clifford: The magical mystery tour of Fossa’s run to the All-Ireland final ]

Clifford was doing pretty well at the other end and had five points of his own on the board at the break. But Fossa were getting cleaned out around the middle and Darren Devlin was just about breaking par on the Footballer of the Year. The Tyrone side led 1-7 to 0-7 at the half and were full value for it.

Such a shame then that Darren Devlin had to go and get himself stupidly sent off, wafting a hand in the face of Emmett O’Shea in the 38th minute. O’Shea made a meal of it, falling to the ground as if taken out by sniper fire. But all the same, if you put a hand to a guy’s mush, you’re asking for trouble. Clifford and his brother Paudie basically took over from that point on.

It ended in the most junior football way possible. An orgy of pushing and pulling, six red cards – five of them in stoppage-time – including both Cliffords and Gareth Devlin. In truth, the only dirty act in the game was a rotten elbow from Anton Coyle that left Paudie Clifford with a cartoon fat lip. But even so, the ref spent most of the endgame going around looking for culprits like a sub-teacher who has felt the sting of a peashooter to the back of the head. When Thomas Murphy finally got to blow the long whistle, Fossa were All-Ireland champions, 0-19 to 1-13.

If the second game didn’t have quite the same level of drama, it had plenty to keep the audience intrigued all the same. Rathmore were generally able to keep Galbally at arms’ length most of the way but it took a couple of stunning saves from goalkeeper Kenneth O’Keeffe to see them home.

O’Keeffe is another great story from the shadowlands of the club game. The 46-year-old brother of former All-Ireland winning goalie Declan, he last played in Croke Park in 1996 as part of the Kerry team that lost an All-Ireland minor final to Laois.

A full 27 years later, he not only did his job between the sticks with those two crucial saves, his presence freed Ryan – the current All Star goalkeeper, remember – to do his bit outfield. Ryan’s 1-3 was the breathing space Rathmore needed to see their way to a 1-11 to 0-11 victory in the end.

All-Ireland JFC final: Fossa (Kerry) 0-19 Stewartstown Harps (Tyrone) 1-13

FOSSA: Shane O’Sullivan; Brian Myers, Fintan Coffey, Kevin McCarthy; Daniel O’Keeffe, Ruairí Doyle, Daniel O’Connell; Eoin Talbot, Paddy Sheehan; Harry Buckley (0-3), Matt Rennie, Cian O’Shea; Paudie Clifford (0-2), David Clifford (0-11, three frees), Emmett O’Shea (0-3, one mark).

Subs: Rian Colleran for K McCarthy (h-t); Tadhg O’Shea for Doyle (54 mins); Cillian Buckley for H Buckley (62); Cian Doyle for P Clifford (62-63, blood); Mark Dennehy for O’Keeffe (67).

STEWARTSTOWN HARPS: Greg Kelly; Jason Park, Darren Devlin, Connor Quinn (0-1); Kyran Robinson, Mark Rooney (0-1), Gerard O’Neill; Stephen Talbot (0-1), Macauley Quinn (0-2); Dylan McElhatton, Cumhaí O’Neill, Tiernan Rush; Dan Lowe (0-3, two frees), Gareth Devlin (1-5, three frees), Theo Lowe.

Subs: Anton Coyle for T Lowe (46 mins); Cathal Devlin for D Lowe (52).

Referee: Thomas Murphy (Galway)

All-Ireland IFC final: Rathmore (Kerry) 1-11 Galbally Pearses (Tyrone) 0-11

RATHMORE: Kenneth O’Keeffe; James O’Sullivan, Andrew Moynihan, Dan Murphy; Alan Dineen, Paul Murphy, Fionn Holohan; Mark Ryan (0-1), Cathal Ryan; Brendan O’Keeffe (0-1), Chrissy Spiers (0-3, three frees), Brian Friel; John Moynihan, James Darmody (0-2), Shane Ryan (1-3).

Subs: Cillian O’Connor for O’Sullivan (35 mins); Mark Reen (0-1) for Moynihan (56); O’Sullivan for Dineen (58); Anthony Darmody for J Darmody (61); D Rahilly for Spiers (66).

GALBALLY: Ronan McGeary; Conor Quinn, Conor Donnelly, Marc Lennon; Christopher Morris, Liam Rafferty, John Hetherington; Enda McGarrity, Cormac Donnelly; Seán Wylie, Ronan Nugent (0-1), Barry Carberry; Conor Donaghy (0-7, five frees, two 45s), Seán Murphy, Daniel Kerr (0-3, one free).

Subs: Aidan Carberry for B Carberry (h-t); Fearghal McGarrity for Cormaic Donnelly (50 mins); Séamus Óg Mulgrew for Wylie (56).

Referee: Barry Tiernan (Dublin).