While Jim Gavin and the latest Football Review Committee consider possible changes to make football more attractive, the most famous footballing brothers in the country, David and Paudie Clifford, are not for turning on the split season. The Fossa siblings say “you can still live a bit of a life" when playing club football as opposed to the regimental regime that exists at intercounty season. “Everyone knows about the new split season structure," David said in Killarney yesterday morning at the official opening of a new MRI unit by Alliance.
"You finish out your county season and then you move swiftly to your club season. In terms of the off season, it just depends how successful your teams are. “Thinking back to last year, we played Milltown/Castlemaine in the intermediate final around the 18th of November I think, so you probably had whatever was left in 2023 then, and then you were kind of getting back at it in January.
“It just depends on how well your club is going, and it’s probably again a conversation to be had then between ourselves and management, depending on how far your club has gone. "Generally, you want to get three or four weeks off the pitch.” The Kingdom talisman, who saw the Kingdom's championship season end against Armagh at the All-Ireland semi-final stage, says he loves the innocence of club football.
“The beauty of the club season, in my opinion anyway, is while you’re putting 110 per cent and everything into Fossa, you can still, of course, do things that maybe you wouldn’t be able to do in the Kerry season. “You can go on holidays midweek and be back for a game at the weekend, or maybe go out with the team after the game when you mightn’t be doing that for every game with Kerry. "While there’s more action, and it’s busier, I just think you can still live a bit of your life while you’re involved with a club team, whereas it’s just a bit more full-on with the county scene.
That’s the simple fact of it really.” His brother Paudie agrees that the split season allows players “to live a bit” and he doesn’t want it changed because it helps the intercounty player to get some down time. “That’s where the split season helps.
I suppose we’re finished with Kerry in July or end of July, whenever it is, and then you still have maybe half the year to live a bit, whereas before, it was middle of September, end of September and what have you, two or three months and you’re playing club games, and everything is together. "It’s a better life balance the way it is now with the split season definitely.” Paudie and David came up through the ranks to the senior set-up in contrasting ways.
Paudie never played minor or U-21 with Kerry and in fact did not play in his first game with Kerry until the League in 2020 and did not become a regular Kerry senior until 2021. So did he find the transition difficult? “It’s definitely a big-step," he says. "Being a smaller type of fella, you definitely aren’t ready for it after minor, or even under-20.
You can see a lot of fellas, they’re taking the extra year or two, maybe being in the panel for a year, and then they make their breakthrough after that. “It’s a massive step-up, and everybody is at such a high level that you have to at least get to that level, physically, before you can start thinking about making teams, or anything like that. You just have to enjoy trying to get yourself to that level, and then try to take your chance when you get to the level.
” But in complete contrast David had two Hogan Cups and two All-Ireland minor medals by the time Éamonn Fitzmaurice gave him his Kerry senior debut just a month after 19th birthday. “I came off the back of the minor team," he says, "and I was lucky in the sense that a good few of my minor team went straight into the senior set-up, so obviously while it was a big step-up, there were a few of us there to try and go through it together. “I was obviously tall as a minor anyway, so I suppose I still needed to get a bit stronger, but, as a corner-forward, you were still able to avoid a lot of the big hits.
I wasn’t out in the middle of the field or anything. Obviously the step-up is very difficult, but I was delighted when I was able to make it that time. “For all those years as well, you’re obviously stuck with Fossa, and then I was also stuck with Tralee IT in the Sigerson at the start, and then up to University of Limerick.
“The relationships between those managers was always very important, because they were able to pick up the phone to say each other and say ‘right, you have can have him for this session, or he’s back with us for that session.’ “I always found that very helpful because there were never times where I felt that I was being over-used or anything. I was always able to pick sessions here and there, and be with a team when I needed to be with them.
" The split season too allows for perennial discussion of championship strutures. What do the Cliffords think of the current format of the Sam Maguire? “There definitely could be tweaks made. The provincials are fine but the groups, when there are three coming out of it, it kind of feels like you are playing games, and there isn’t much at stake.
"That’s not the way it should be at that stage of the championship. It could do with tweaking, but I’m not sure exactly what the best way forward is,” says David. Paudie adds: “You could look at something like where if you’re possibly going to keep your groups of four, maybe the top team does get a home quarter-final.
"That’s a massive incentive, because everybody fancies themselves in their own county grounds. That could be a good idea.” David and Paudie Clifford were speaking at the official opening a new MRI service now available at the new Alliance Medical Diagnostics facility at the Reeks Gateway building in Killarney.
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