Clifford and Small lay into each other before fist-bumping and getting on with it

Niall McIntyre

John Small will puck, get pucked and he’ll move on.

Ye won’t fall out over it and then, if the chance arises, like a true warrior he’ll go for you again. He’s on first name terms with the rough and tumble at this stage but, even though his reputation often precedes him and he gets called dirty and scummy and whatever else the keyboard warriors can think of, the Ballymun man has shown on numerous occasions down through the years that, for the most part, he plays the game in the right spirt.

He can give it but he can take it too.

It was one of the more endearing moments of the Dublin-Mayo rivalry when, in last year’s semi-final, Lee Keegan laid him out with a walloping hit. Groggy but refusing to show it, Small got back to his feet and like any tough bit of stuff would, he squared up to the man who’d seconds earlier knocked fonks out of him.

Keegan smiled over and as they horsed into each other for a second time, you could only respect it when, in the heat of battle, Small gave him this one and smiled back. It was only when Keegan turned around that Small stopped for a breather because, like he was taught as a young lad, he was never going to show a rival any weakness.

Whatever it is about Dublin’s wing back, it seems that, whether it’s against Mayo at the business-end, Laois in the O’Byrne Cup or Kerry in the League, he’s always going to be slap-bang in the thick of it. It was no different in Tralee on a wet, windy February Saturday.

Having given Brian Fenton a clip, David Clifford wound it up and it was only seconds before 20 men were going at it. To stand up for his team-mate, Small was one of the first on the scene and it was a testament to the fabrics used by O’Neills that, with Clifford trying to rip the jersey clean off over his head, it somehow stayed in one piece.

The boys stayed shoving and dragging and clipping before, eventually, they tired of it and Conor Lane got a hold of them. Clifford and Small predictably, were summoned by the referee but there was no sulking, no moaning, just a healthy respect between two fierce competitors.