Malachy Clerkin: David Clifford should win Footballer of the Year but it’s an extremely marginal call

It is, of course, an excellent thing that there is a debate over whether Footballer of the Year should go to Ryan O’Donoghue or David Clifford. For one thing, the very fact that anybody is able to get within an ass’s roar of Clifford is an achievement in and of itself. O’Donoghue isn’t competing with Clifford in a down year, after all. He’s matching him stride for stride in one of the Kerry maestro’s best ever seasons.Clifford is the supreme footballer of the age, we know that. He had a championship this summer in which he scored not just the most overall but also the most from play and the most goals. He jumped from seventh to second in the all-time scoring charts at the age of just 27. We will be boring younger generations about him for decades to come.We take Clifford mostly for granted, despite the fact that we’re living through history with him. In 2026, he scored a goal in seven of Kerry’s eight matches. Since the introduction of All-Ireland quarter-finals in 2001, nobody had managed a goal in a quarter-final, semi-final and final of the same championship. In fact, only four players in total – Cathal McShane (2021), Con O’Callaghan (2017), Kieran Donaghy (2014) and Colm Cooper (2011) – had delivered goals in a semi-final and a final in the one year.Not only did Clifford become the first player to score a goal in each of the Croke Park rounds, he scored a goal in each of Kerry’s five knockout games. The Munster final too, since we’re counting. He scored 1-10 against Armagh, 1-8 against Tyrone, 1-5 against Dublin and 1-6 against Mayo, with all but 0-6 of it coming from play. If he has ever played better for Kerry, it wasn’t by much.READ MOREMayo's Ryan O'Donoghue in action against Kerry in the All-Ireland final. Photograph: Ryan Byrne/Inpho So for O’Donoghue to even make this a conversation needed something special. He provided it too, putting in Man of the Match displays in both the semi-final and final, another thing that is virtually unheard of. Clifford himself did it in 2022 and even then, plenty of us will go to our grave arguing that Shane Walsh was the Man of that particular Match and only didn’t get it because he was on the losing side.O’Donoghue was extraordinary for Mayo during their run to Sam Maguire. He passes the most simple criterium for Footballer of the Year – had he played at any level below what he produced, Mayo would not have done what they did. His run alone for Darragh Beirne’s goal in the final will live forever.If you were in a pub with Mayo people for The Sunday Game on the night of the final, that run has to be one of the highlights of the whole experience. It’s one thing living it in real time, wondering where it’s going to lead. It’s another entirely when you know it’s coming and everyone around you is high on life. As soon as he got the ball on his own 45, the whole pub was willing him to beat one, beat two, beat three, keep going, keep going, G’WAN RYANOOOOOO!!Scintillating from Mayo. Ryan O'Donoghue powers forward from his own half, beats multiple Kerry men, and Darragh Beirne fires into the net for Mayo. 📺 Watch on RTÉ2 and RTÉ Player📻 Listen on RTÉ Radio 1#SundayGame pic.twitter.com/6aYvUX09ED— The Sunday Game (@TheSundayGame) July 26, 2026 [ Ryan O’Donoghue: ‘After the All-Ireland, a lot of people know where Belmullet is’Opens in new window ]This isn’t how these things work but that run is almost worth Footballer of the Year all by itself. There’s the tangible, numeric, bean-counter argument – it put Mayo four points ahead, their biggest lead in an All-Ireland final since the replay in 1996. But there’s a more winsome, poetic, airy-fairy shout for it too.O’Donoghue collected the ball the guts of 100 yards from goal with 12 of the Kerry players in front of him. Maybe he was thinking there was a goal on at that point but if so, he was the only one. Pulling a goal out of that situation was every bit as unlikely as Mayo pulling an All-Ireland out of a season that was going nowhere at half-time in the Meath game just five weeks previously. Footballer of the Year personified, right there.So it’s a 50/50 call, essentially. In the Irish News during the week, Cahair O’Kane produced a magnificent piece of excavation, pulling up all the stats from Clifford and O’Donoghue’s season. (He did Jack Carney’s too but even Jack would probably concede that he’s Well Chief to the other pair’s Moscow Flyer and Azertyuiop.) The numbers are illuminating without being a slam dunk on either side.Kerry's David Clifford scores against Dublin despite David Byrne. Photograph: James Crombie/Inpho Clifford scored more and missed less than O’Donoghue. He also lost the ball far fewer times (13-3). On the flipside, O’Donoghue assisted more and was involved in significantly more turnovers than Clifford – 17-0, which might have been the most eyebrow-raising stat of them all. But then again, if we’re getting into the territory of turnovers won being a deciding stat for Footballer of the Year, it’s probably not proof of anything other than how close the contest is.For what it’s worth, if this column had a vote it would go to Clifford. In the rush of the morning after on July 27th, it felt like O’Donoghue’s but a bit of distance swings it marginally in Clifford’s favour here. There’s probably a bang of The Beatles Are Actually Underrated off this but what we’re alive for here feels genuinely underappreciated.This was his ninth season as an intercounty player and he’s been the focus of every opposition gameplan in every game throughout. And still he was impossible to stop in this championship. We forget how difficult that is, even as he runs up an average of 1-6 a game to remind us. But whoever the membership of the GPA choose, it won’t be the wrong decision. Whether O’Donoghue wins the award or not, giving peak David Clifford a run for his money is a feat to rank alongside the very best of a year of miracles and dreams.