So who exactly is the greatest?

Recency bias is not an idea that pops immediately to mind when discussing last Sunday's All Ireland Football Final or even the soon to start Connacht Gold Leitrim Senior Football Championship but nevertheless, the reaction to events last weekend  is very much governed by how we've reacted to what we witnessed.

I had thought of devoting this column to lauding the mighty Dubs - it certainly wasn't the best  final I've been lucky enough to see the boys in blue win but it ranks right up there in terms of intensity, tension and sheer joy at the final whistle, almost a “heavy metal” Celtic Cross for the Dubs with the wins in 2011 and 2019, special epoch-defining wins.

But no, what I've been thinking of is how we're all susceptible to believing a concept  right up until the moment it is no longer true and then we  start backwards engineering all that we know to fit the new narrative. That's true of  the race to win the Fenagh Cup and it is true of David Clifford, a player who was being lauded as the greatest player to ever lace up a pair of boots - until he wasn't!

Stronger together is not just a slogan

THE LAST POINT

Locally, many are rethinking the opinion, oft expressed to me over the past month, that there is nothing to stop St Mary's winning back to back Senior titles but Fenagh St Caillins' superb win last Saturday  in the Senior League final suddenly opens up  new horizons for the men in Red & Black but also for others with designs on  the Fenagh Cup.

Does Fenagh's win change everything or does it simply remind us all that nothing is ever simple - St Mary's confounded what we all believed last year and  Fenagh did the same last Saturday. But perhaps the key message to come out of the game is that the win was achieved without Ryan O'Rourke and Oisin McLoughlin. Ask anyone a couple of months ago could St Caillins win without Ryan or Oisin and the answer is a definite no. So maybe, all of our thinking has been wrong!

Recency bias, both good and bad, is the lot of the  extraordinary David Clifford. Right up until 3.30 pm last Sunday, the Fossa ace was being spoken of as an otherworldly superhuman being beyond compare, a footballer who makes everyone who came before him pale into insignificance but now, some don't even have him as the Footballer of the Year - that's quite a juxtaposition.

Regular readers of this column will know I'm a self-confessed contrary git and certainly the Dub in me railed at the notion that Clifford, with just one All-Ireland to his name, could be considered the “greatest of all time - trademark pending” as the hype machine went into overdrive. Clifford is a truly special talent, seemingly touched by the Gods,  but the greatest of all time?  How the hell do you decide that and  how do you rank the pantheon of greats each and every county can lay claim to? 

Dublin's trio of nine All-Ireland medal winners James McCarthy, Stephen Cluxton and Mick Fitzsimons celebrate after their victory over Kerry Picture: Sportsfile

If it is medals won, the  late great Packie McGarty is nowhere on the list, having famously never won a medal at club or county level. But McGarty's magic was not measured in medals or trophies but in how he made fans all over the country feel, the emotions he stirred in them still warming the hearts of his county folk maybe half a century since he last kicked a ball for Leitrim.

Leitrim's own legends include tales of the Nipper Shanley, Johnny McGoldrick, Cathal Flynn and the incomparable Mickey Martin. Willie Donnellan, as good a judge of a footballer as I know, places the St Mary's legend above everyone he has ever seen in Leitrim Green & Gold, having never been lucky to see McGarty play in the flesh - that's quite an endorsement.

No more than myself, Willie was enthralled by the sight of Padraig Joyce while the names of Purcell, Earley, Flanagan, Kerins, Stockwell, McCartan, O'Neill, Canavan and Murphy resonate with fans of different eras and I haven't even got to my own beloved Dubs! Jim Gavin says his all conquering heroes owe everything to Kevin Heffernan and the Dubs of the 70s, so does that make Heffo better than the Blue Army's Triple 9 of McCarthy, Fitzsimons and Cluxton?

Of that trio, Cluxton  changed the game and how we think about it  while James Mc is the typical Dub the entire country seems to love, a bit of craic and a grand lad to have a pint with and Mick Fitz, less celebrated than his colleagues, is the sort of soldier all great teams are built upon, doing his job without fuss or fanfare.

If medals is your only currency, Fitzsimons, Cluxton and McCarthy are the greatest to ever play the game but not even the wildest Hill 16 resident could  make that claim!

Harsh lessons now may yet bear fruit

THE LAST POINT

Truth be told, it rubs me the wrong way to hear the Kingdom's own fans proclaiming Clifford the greatest ever because that betrays the legacies of Jack O'Shea, Mick O'Connell, Maurice Fitzgerald, Pat Spillane, Declan O'Sullivan and the Gooch to name but six. 

Clifford might well be the best footballer there has ever been but he hasn't earned that tag - not yet! Longevity is part of the argument and while Clifford undoubtedly possesses all the requisite skills and is depressingly modest and down to earth (!), leave it another few years before we inevitably bestow that particular crown on the Fossa magician.