Cavanagh's Injury Quip Gives Insight Into How Incredible David Clifford Is

Marking David Clifford is like trying to pick up mercury with a fork. Clifford finished with 1-9 after another GOAT level performance to inspire Kerry into the 2025All-Ireland final.

Padraig Hampsey will be having nightmares about the Fossa man tonight, he tortured Tyrone from start to finish.

He displayed every single one of the skills in his armoury. one on one with him is a lose lose situation, Hampsey showed him onto his left he swung over a two pointer, he showed him the inside Clifford burned him along the byline and blasted over, you can’t win.

Niall Morgan was looking unbeatable at stages in the first half, he was equal to anything Kerry threw at him until Clifford got in behind with a well timed back door cut before selling Morgan his trademark dummy bounce to buy himself that extra yard to finish.

At the start of the second half he showed he can mix it any way you want shrugging off Hampsey with his right arm this time a left handed bounce and slotted over another point.

Conn Kilpatrick had a go next, Clifford drove at him with his trademark right hand to left foot cross solo allowing him to use his left hand to swat Kilpatrick away before slotting over.

Speaking at halftime, there was an interesting exchange between Sean Cavanagh and Joanne Cantwell, where Cavanagh admitted his hope was that Tyrone's only hope was an injury to the Fossa man.

SC: The one thing from Tyrone is they have that spread of scorers. If anything happens to David down on the other end, Kerry are snookered.

JC: So that's what you're hanging onto, an injury to David Clifford?

SC: There is nothing else to hang onto when you're talking about that man

Cavanagh would return to the subject of Clifford's brilliance.

If you put too much around David, you're almost hoping David is going to wear out at some stage. He was playing angry. You could see it in the first couple of points he got, he was celebrating, fistpumping. He was really stoked up.

Tyrone were effective in curtailing Seanie O'Shea and Paudie Clifford. However they had not answer for Clifford.

You can see when Kerry are attacking all of their players are thinking, where is Clifford? Jonathan Pearce’s iconic commentary on Messi "give it to him and pray" comes to mind.

Brendan McCole or Sean Rafferty will have their work cut out in the final, it’s like having a burglar in your house but you don’t know what room he’s in.