East Kerry manager Adrian Sheehan doesn\u2019t expect Paudie Clifford will be available for any part of the upcoming Kerry senior championship.<\/p>\n
Winners of four of the last six championships, the divisional side commence their campaign against St Kieran\u2019s in Austin Stack Park on Sunday.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s a quick turnaround for the Fossa men in the group who were defeated by An Ghaeltacht at the Tralee venue in last Sunday\u2019s club intermediate final where the older Clifford brother went off injured in the 50th minute.<\/p>\n
After missing the Munster final through suspension, the 28-year-old was then sidelined with the same setback for the opening All-Ireland SFC group game against Roscommon.<\/p>\n
He began the following win over Cork but came off on the cusp of half-time and was out again for the defeat to Meath. He returned as a substitute in the wins over Cavan and Armagh, impressing as a half-time introduction against the 2024 All-Ireland winners.<\/p>\n
He started the subsequent victories over Tyrone and Donegal but speaking after the All-Ireland final admitted the leg issue had troubled him going back to spring. \u201cI had a good league but just couldn’t get a hamstring injury right for a while. And even the lead-up to the Armagh game, just didn’t feel great that week.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
Clifford was also unavailable for Fossa\u2019s opening two IFC group fixtures prior to a second-half appearance in the dead rubber final round defeat to Kilcummin. The three-time All Star began the following three knock-out games but was clearly not fully fit against An Ghaeltacht.<\/p>\n
Former Fossa manager Sheehan, who led the club to the All-Ireland junior title with coach \u00c9amonn Fitzmaurice in 2023, hasn\u2019t been in touch with the club\u2019s players since their defeat at the weekend. However, he had been aware of Clifford\u2019s injury going into that final. \u201cHow long he is going to be out? I\u2019d be surprised if I see him any more this year.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
Lose this weekend and East Kerry will have another chance to enter the first round proper in a preliminary second round game possibly against the newly-formed North Kerry.<\/p>\n
Sheehan said he won\u2019t be expecting too much from East Kerry\u2019s inter-county players following a gruelling season. \u201cI wouldn\u2019t be putting any pressure on them.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
Aside from the Cliffords, there are the likes of panel members Darragh Lyne, Dara Moynihan, Ruair\u00ed Murphy and Donal O\u2019Sullivan.<\/p>\n
Sheehan completely understands why so many of Kerry\u2019s inter-county players chose to skip last year\u2019s district board competitions too. It is believed they will look to do the same in the coming weeks.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou can\u2019t sustain that level of playing. It\u2019s not even that, they\u2019re expected to perform every time they go out. That\u2019s taxing. Their bodies might be fine but it\u2019s that mental challenge that can be draining.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
Sunday\u2019s IFC final was David Clifford\u2019s sixth game in as many weekends for Fossa. Including inter-county games, he has lined out in 20 matches this year since making his seasonal bow in the National League clash away to Tyrone at the end of February.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"East Kerry manager Adrian Sheehan doesn\u2019t expect Paudie Clifford will be available for any part of the upcoming…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":68233,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[76],"tags":[10416,18,19,17,132],"class_list":{"0":"post-68232","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-sports","8":"tag-kerry-gaa","9":"tag-eire","10":"tag-ie","11":"tag-ireland","12":"tag-sports"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/68232","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=68232"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/68232\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/68233"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=68232"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=68232"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=68232"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}