Two groups of teenaged Kerry fans met each other outside The Big Romance pub on Parnell Street about an hour after the full-time whistle on Sunday.
Consolatory hugs were exchanged, their county colours unmistakable even under their ponchos. One of the group then let out a theatrical sigh in the pouring rain, and loudly proclaimed – “I hate this f***ing city”. You could see where he was coming from.
It is a final that will go down as one they could easily have won, in Kerry minds. They did enough things correctly to win the game. And yet they were outlasted by an extraordinary group of mentality monsters, to borrow a phrase from Jurgen Klopp.
The plan was to get David Clifford enough touches in his own personally-designed scoring zone (far wider than the average scoring zone), and in that narrow context that plan worked. Clifford just missed the kicks.
The year it all worked out: Brian Lohan on Clare’s All-Ireland deliverance
Irish Times Sportswoman of the Year Awards: ‘The greatest collection of women in Irish sport in one place ever assembled’
Malachy Clerkin: After 27 years of being ignored by British government, some good news at last for Seán Brown’s family
Two-time Olympic champion Kellie Harrington named Irish Times/Sport Ireland Sportswoman of the Year 2024
The assumption is not that he would score with all of his touches, or indeed that he would get a shot away with all of his touches. That isn’t how the game works, not even for him.
But even if you leave aside the two shots he hit from wide angles under massive pressure from Michael Fitzsimons, he missed 1-2 under no pressure from scorable angles in the second half, and should have fisted over a third point when he had left his marker on his backside in the first half.
That would have been good enough for 1-5 or 1-6 (plus an otherworldly goal assist), a second All-Ireland title in a row, the Player of the Year award, probably another man of the match award, the RTÉ Sports Personality of the Year award, and possibly a run at the Áras.
Kerry can say that they need more support for him, and they do. Seán O’Shea can look back at another All-Ireland final that didn’t really happen for him, and he will. But it was extraordinary the extent to which the immediate post-match reaction around Dublin city centred on one man.
This is the tightrope that true inside-forwards walk. The entire stadium was thinking the same thing 21 or 22 minutes into Sunday’s final – he’s only touched it once. He swung over a ridiculous score with that one touch, but how do you stay patient and focused when you know that 82,000 people, and almost a million people watching at home, are thinking the same thing you’re thinking – you need to get on the ball.
And yet still, that willingness to show patience is a virtue. In Gaelic football now more so even than in other sports, it can be very easy to rack up possessions. If you’re playing at half-back or even at midfield, you could touch the ball 25 times and have made no real discernible impact on the game, over and above what the average inter-county footballer would make in that same set of circumstances.
Clifford knows that he could be very effective pulling the strings from further out the field for 10 or 15 minutes at a time, and it would get him into the game. But the focus of attention on him is so intense that even the sight of him hand-passing the ball backwards to a team-mate 65 yards out from goal is seen as a win by the opposing team.
Whatever post-game criticism he received, and the subsequent criticism of that criticism, is just indicative of his outsized place in the game’s firmament.
I was in the city centre for a post-match pint when I met a group from Fossa. I was asking them for a stool when they engaged me in conversation about the game, and it inevitably turned to Clifford. The younger couple were Second Captains listeners, the older couple may not have been – but when the elder statesman of the family asked me to go easy on him, it was clear that the emotional events of the Cliffords’ summer, losing their mother when they did, was uppermost in his mind.
His every touch of the ball takes on outsized significance, and so too it appears does every word spoken about him. But he can’t be immune from criticism, and his army of acolytes can’t justifiably say every critic is acting in bad faith.
I double-checked with the man who first brought the stat to my attention on Monday afternoon – the author and journalist Christy O’Connor confirmed that in the 2010 All-Ireland hurling final, Tipperary’s Lar Corbett scored 3-0 from only eight possessions.
So over the course of the entire game, injury time included, Lar Corbett touched the ball once every 9 or 10 minutes. If you’re a defender, you can’t be asked to do much more than that. But he won the game, and the man of the match award, and to all intents and purposes that game is ‘the Lar Corbett final’. Eight touches! And this from a corner-forward who actually really did rotate his position from inside line to outside line.
Clifford’s willingness to stand inside and wait (and wait, and wait) is an admission that he’ll walk the tightrope. And that can go wrong, even for the most gravity-defying of us.
