The inter-county season has ended for Kerry, and whilst some people may be happy, others are upset at the prospect of not seeing David Clifford for another six months.
At 19 years of age, Clifford is still the new kid on the block at senior football but the reality is that we have all known about him for some time now.
The above video is for his former school, St Brendan’s Killarney in a Hogan Cup final.
Below, is for Kerry in his first of two All-Ireland minor finals. Kerry won that All-Ireland, followed by the next one where he proceeded to score 4-4. A new record.
After this stellar underage career Kingdom fans cried out for him to forego the u20 campaign and throw his lot in with the senior set-up.
Kerry’s management team answered supporters’ calls. The corner-forward was drafted into the Kingdom senior side in January and took to inter-county football like a duck to water.
These ridiculous stats from the inaugural super 8 series paint a picture of a player who is going to terrorise defences for a long, long time.
David Clifford is extraordinary. Super 8s
0-02 from 2 on frees (yellow)
4-00 from 4 on goal attempts (red)
0-12 from 17 (71%) on point attempts (white = left, black = right)That’s 78% (4–14 from 23) in total scoring ~11 points more than an avg intercounty player would #Yeesh pic.twitter.com/mTuVycDcZP
— dontfoul (@dontfoul) August 8, 2018
The Fossa club man scored 4-14 over the three Super 8 games, these three teams were no slouches either. Galway and Monaghan are now preparing for a semi-final, while Kildare knocked Mayo out of the championship.
It isn’t just the sheer number of scores though, that is impressive, it is everything else around it.
Only two of his scores came from free-kicks, whilst one of his goals was a penalty. That means he scored 3-12 from play over the three games.
Of that 0-12 from play, the wonder-kid only had 17 attempts. As well as this, there was four attempts on goal, and he scored all four. Clinical.
In total, Clifford had 23 efforts on goal, and picked up 18 scores. That is a 78% success rate, which is 11 points more than the average inter county player. Truly staggering statistics for a player of such a young age.
David Clifford, take a bow.
Again.
