Advertisement League of Ireland Horse Racing TV Listings GAA Fixtures The Video Review Sport meets news, current affairs, society & pop culture Rugby Weekly Extra Dive into all the news and analysis 3 times a week The Football Family Weekly insights from the week’s big talking points Advertisement More Stories Kerry's Paudie Clifford and Donegal's Finbarr Roarty.Lorraine O’Sullivan/INPHO Analysisexpert view Trophy-hunting Kerry and Donegal won't be worried about delivering a fitting football finale Gaelic football has been transformed, but the end goal on All-Ireland final day remains the same. 6.01am, 25 Jul 2025 Share options Micheál Clifford IN THIS INDUSTRY, guiltily we are peddlers of pain. Someone gushing about the best day of their lives will fill column inches, but too much sweetness and light will not give your copy a sugar rush. But, perversely, when the focus switches to the dark side for your subject, misery finds ways of articulation that are instantly revealing. Jim McGuinness’ admission this week of walking around the team hotel in a daze, not knowing where he was and what had happened on the evening of the 2014 All-Ireland final offered that kind of clarity. Ryan McHugh’s confession, within minutes of Donegal’s trouncing of Meath in the semi-final, that he had never watched that final back the absolute measure of how deeply that defeat to Kerry cut. But, then, in the history of All-Ireland finals played back or downloaded, was there ever one that received less demand for recall? It was a game made for a micro mini-bitesize highlights package, Paul Geaney’s early goal, Papa Durcan’s fatal mis-step and Kieran Donaghy, the beneficiary of the latter, asking Joe Brolly what he thought of that, and you are left with a reel that is barely longer than what it takes Shaun Patton to get the ball off the restart tee. Paul Geaney celebrates scoring his side's first goal in the 2014 All-Ireland final.James Crombie / INPHO James Crombie / INPHO / INPHO That could never happen again, surely, you ask? That was from a dark time, a whole world away from this festival of self expression that football has become over the past six months. Except, it is worth remembering that expectations around that final 11 years ago were anything but austere. Indeed, inside 24 hours over a semi-final weekend, football rocked in ways that the celebrated new game came up feebly shy of in the penultimate round earlier this month. Advertisement Down in Limerick, in the most intense, electrified atmosphere this column has ever witnessed, Kerry and Mayo hopped off each other for 90 plus minutes in a relentless battle of wills, while 20 hours later Donegal inflicted the only championship defeat of Jim Gavin’s managerial career with a performance that was as clinical as it was clever as they made hay in the unoccupied half acre in front of the Dublin posts. The final was sold as one to be savoured but in the end it would be swallowed with the relish of castor oil. That’s finals for you. Do a quick rewind of the memory bank as a neutral, and how many do you stop and linger over. The 2017 Dublin/Mayo tops our pile, the 2005 Kerry/Tyrone dance-off too and, perhaps, the 2022 Clifford/Walsh shoot-out, but they tend to be few and far between. The expectation for all kinds of reasons is that Sunday is another in waiting. The transformed rules of engagement, the conflict of deeply ingrained football cultures where one cherishes run and the other kick, and, of course, the head-to-head of all-time greats in Michael Murphy and David Clifford. Donegal's Michael Murphy.Tom O’Hanlon / INPHO Tom O’Hanlon / INPHO / INPHO Kerry's David Clifford.Tom O’Hanlon / INPHO Tom O’Hanlon / INPHO / INPHO Truth be told, we would not be holding our breath on any of that. In fact, the conditions for this game to be sauced with caution is perhaps double what it was back 11 years ago. Back then, Eamon Fitzmaurice had seen enough to know that if the game rocked to Donegal’s beat, his team would be rolled over the cliff edge. Instead of playing on the front foot and getting suckered into tracking Donegal’s deep lying players, his half-back line held their shape. On Donegal’s side, there seemed to be no plan B in the event of Kerry not being lured into that trap and hence you got an All-Ireland final where the hum of spectator conversations became the game’s damning soundtrack. This time, there are obvious challenges on both sides. Kerry manager Jack O’ConnorRyan Byrne / INPHO Ryan Byrne / INPHO / INPHO Jack O’Connor’s is how his team can stay physically in the game for the full race, having seen Monaghan and Meath emptied having tried to match Donegal’s fearsome athleticism and speed, fuelled by the strongest bench in the game. Donegal’s obsession will extend beyond the obvious, but nothing alters the reality that curbing the impact of Clifford gets them more than half way there. The centre ground for O’Connor and McGuinness in getting a grip on both of those challenges is minimising turnovers. Kerry can’t get drawn into a breathless game of ball, not only because they are unlikely to have the athletic reserves to stay the course, which puts a huge onus on not only winning possession but also in managing it. They may not have faced a team as good as Donegal thus far, but to a point they have beaten a team in Armagh who are not dissimilar to how the Ulster champions set-up defensively by protecting the arc, although McGuinness’ will be a lot more proactive in applying heat, particularly on Sean O’Shea, outside it. Donegal football manager Jim McGuinness.Tom O’Hanlon / INPHO Tom O’Hanlon / INPHO / INPHO But in possession Kerry may seek to slow the game down if only to draw out the Donegal press. On the other side, while Donegal’s ability to cash in on Patton’s kick-outs – an incredible 2-13 came off it in the semi-final against Meath – the price for going short and running through the lines is to risk the turnovers which Kerry thrive on. Kerry’s kicking game is weaponised when the opposition defence is not set and Clifford’s threat is at its most obvious in that moment. Of course, the scoreboard and the game-clock will eventually ensure that one team will have to blink and go for it, but in getting to that point, the expectations that we will be treated to a fitting season finale may have to be iced. Because the bottom line is that for those at the heart of it, having the stomach to ever watch it back again will not depend on how pretty it was, but rather on how pleasurable it still is. Check out the latest episode of The42′s GAA Weekly podcast here Micheál Clifford Viewcomments Send Tip or Correction Embed this post To embed this post, copy the code below on your site Email “Trophy-hunting Kerry and Donegal won't be worried about delivering a fitting football finale”. Recipient's Email Feedback on “Trophy-hunting Kerry and Donegal won't be worried about delivering a fitting football finale”. 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