Kerry felt 'disrespected' before sealing Sam Maguire win

RTÉ News​

27-07-2025

Kerry felt "disrespected" before overcoming Donegal in Sunday's All-Ireland SFC final, according to the Clifford brothers.
The Kingdom won the decider 1-26 to 0-19 at Croke Park for a 39th Sam Maguire success for the county and a second title in four years.
But speaking to RTÉ Sport's Damian Lawlor on the pitch after full-time of a match in which he and his brother David excelled, Paudie Clifford admitted that Kerry had felt slighted by the narrative surrounding the team.
"We would have put a lot of pressure on ourselves. We would be our own biggest critics but we did feel disrespected," he said.
"We felt disrespected for a long time. A team that was in three of the last four All-Irelands and have won two of the last four, we felt very disrespected.
"Being called a one-man team when you have fellas like Joe O'Connor, fellas like Jason Foley (who) have worked all their lives to play for Kerry, and you're called a 'one-man team' because you haven't won every All-Ireland. So we felt disrespected."
Paudie Clifford felt today's Kerry performance was years in the making and said they felt disrespected as a team
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Those comments were put to David Clifford by the RTÉ panel and the 26-year-old agreed with his elder sibling.
"Absolutely. I don't think anyone goes out to read articles or anything like that but they get to you, let's be honest about it," he said.
"You get sent something or somebody mentions something to you. Obviously nobody likes it but it's no good either feeling sorry for yourself about 'why are they saying that about us?' You have to go out and prove that they're wrong.
"And to be honest, as good as our last two performances, if we didn't get over the line today, it would have been all for nothing, so we're just delighted we did."
"We are massively proud of how we came back from the Meath game."
David Clifford and Joe O'Connor join the panel to discuss Kerry's victory pic.twitter.com/w8ZGjOvnoK
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However, Paudie Clifford was able to take plenty of satisfication from Kerry's success nevertheless, saying he was "absolutely over the moon".
"Our team has been together for a good few years now. Even though we won the All-Ireland in 2022, it was the first time ever we put a 70-minute performance and we're absolutely delighted," he said.
"We knew what Donegal would bring and we knew it would be unbelievable work-rate. But we just said we'd try and pick around them and try and take the right shots, even though we didn't really in the first half, we did in the second half.
"But we have to give massive credit to our midfielders and Shane Ryan. We had enough possession to be able to give a few balls away and maybe kick a few scores wide. But we still had enough ball."
Midfielder Joe O'Connor, who added a late goal as the icing of the cake, echoed the Cliffords' view that Kerry had something to prove on the day.
"A lot of this group has lost a good few All-Ireland finals and a lot of big games so we wanted to right wrongs and we had setbacks throughout the year as well and we just kept going at it, kept showing up in training, kept learning and I'm just so proud of everyone," he told the RTÉ panel.