“Mam and dad are massive football fans, go to every game.” – Clifford boys couldn’t escape it

Niall McIntyre

There was a decent garden, a wall and a set of goal-posts.

You’re very welcome to Fossa. Nobody knew much about the place ten years ago because, well, blink and you’d have missed it, but then, along came David Clifford and here we are. You’d still miss it if you blinked but there’s an aura about the place now.

Paudie Clifford knows that, for the casual GAA follower, he’s not the one who put it on the map but he’s doing a good job in keeping it there. Wherever one Clifford boy goes you see, there’s always another nearby.

That’s how it’s always been. Paudie will never forget trucking along to games with his father Dermot, who, when the boys were young, was reffing games all over the county. The boys would go with him because why not. Come home then and, after spending the day as umpires, they’d be playing matches in the garden, watching videos of old Kerry classics and then back out to the garden again.

It’s not a bad way to live. With the benefit of hindsight you’d probably say that it’s hardly any wonder.

“My mam and dad are massive football fans, go to every game. Every club game, anything that’s on,” Paudie says now.

Dermot played football with Derrynane and Ellen, his mother, is so mad about the game that the boys could never have escaped it. Paudie is the older, less-heralded brother but anybody who knows anything about Gaelic football knows, given how good he was last year, just how important this man is to the Kerry team. That’s no coincidence.

“We were always just playing out the side of our house,” adds the big brother.

“We have a decent enough size of a lawn, and a wall, and a goal so just playing against each other for years. That’s how it all started and the fact that it was all so competitive helped (in our development). You’re at an advantage there having a brother who is similar enough in age because you can be challenging each other. Making up different kind of games to play against each other. That’s what we did.”

What an unreal score by a young David Clifford, in the socks too! 😳😯👏🏻 pic.twitter.com/36OEjq6Uvo

— Gaelic Elevation (@GaelicElevation) November 10, 2021

And Paudie always knew that the younger brother was something special.

“From what he was doing for Fossa all the way up (I knew.) In primary school he was playing with our senior team when he was in second class. It was only a three teacher school, we were short numbers, but he was starting and playing well.

“Then when he was playing under-12 or 14, he would have been putting up massive scores, that was probably when people started to take notice and we started to realise that he was going to be fairly good.”

For this man, the breakthrough took a bit longer. He was no Kerry underage star and, unlike his brother, had to serve an apprenticeship on the Kerry junior team. But Paudie proved himself there and he proved himself in UCC’s victorious Sigerson Cup campaign in 2019 and despite breaking his leg soon after, nothing was going to stop him. He got into the gym and he went hell for leather.

“Deep down I always kind of thought I had a chance (to play for Kerry). Alright, there would have been days alright when I might have thought that I’d stop kind of pursuing trying to play for Kerry. But deep down I always thought I had a small chance.”

“It would have been my body developed, I did a lot of gym work, did a lot of speed work as well. That was probably the big thing, my body developed. I kind of always had the football, I just had to develop my body and that’s probably what changed, yeah.”

But all the eggs aren’t in the one basket. Having graduated from UCC, he’s keeping busy now as a business development executive in Red Chair recruitment in Killarney.

“I wouldn’t say I’m feeling pressure,” he says, “because if it wasn’t inter-county football I was playing, there’s other things I could be doing. It wouldn’t have been the end of the world either.

But still, just like when he was a young lad, just like he dreamed about, he’s playing for Kerry, he’s enjoying it, he’s doing what he always wanted to do. And that’s the way it is in the Clifford household.