Transfer success for Aoife Clifford with Kildare All-Ireland victory
By Daire Walsh
In their duel with Clare in Division 3 of the Lidl National Football League on 5 February of this year, Kildare manager Diane O’Hora handed a first run out to a player who would go on to be a key figure in a memorable season for her side.
A native of Cork, Aoife Clifford was playing her club football with Araglen Desmonds Buí on the Leeside until last year. However, she was already well settled into a teaching position at the Mercy Convent Primary School in Naas by this point and had been training with the Eadestown club that is located a little over four miles away.
After commuting to and from Araglen Desmonds for a significant period, she finally decided last November that she was going to join forces with Kildare captain Grace Clifford (no relation) in Eadestown.
Despite being a former Cork underage star, she initially didn’t have any designs on a step up to senior inter-county action. Yet she ultimately completed a club and county transfer on the same day (24January) in 2023 and subsequently made her Kildare debut off the bench in a 0-09 to 0-07 league win over the Banner County in Cooraclare.
“It’s actually a bit surreal. I was even thinking of it there, thinking back to November when I decided I was going to finally make the move. I’ve been up here training with the Eadestown girls for the past two years before this, but I was always driving home to play with my club in Cork. It’s kind of hard to leave the home club,” Clifford acknowledged.
“I decided to make the move this year and I hadn’t even thought of playing with Kildare at all. It was just like ‘I’ll transfer to Eadestown, settle in there’. Then it was when Grace said it to me about the trials with Kildare back in November.
“I was kind of ‘oh God, will I go for it or will I not’. It’s one of the best decisions I’ve ever made now! Looking back on it and the year we’ve had. Absolutely brilliant. Wouldn’t change a thing now, definitely not.”
It is certainly easy to see why has no regrets about throwing her lot in with the Lilies. Either side of starting for her adopted county in a Leinster Intermediate triumph against Wexford, she also featured in their Division 3 and All-Ireland Intermediate Championship final successes — both of them coming at the expense of Clare on a scoreline of 2-11 to 2-10.
She lined out at left corner-back last Sunday as Kildare held off a late surge from their Munster counterparts to claim that All-Ireland IFC crown at Croke Park. Having watched Cork play there on several occasions during their heyday as the dominant force in ladies football, Clifford was excited about playing in the Jones’ Road venue for the first time and it very much lived up to her expectations.
“It was brilliant. It’s what you dream of when you’re playing football when you’re younger. So many never get the chance to actually be there, so it was absolutely brilliant. It was a bit surreal. It’s mad with the crowds and everything. You do get to a point in the middle of the game where you’re like ‘okay, it’s another field, it’s another match and that is what we’ll focus on now’.
“It was amazing, such a great experience and even afterwards when we won, all our family and friends were in the stands. Even watching it back, I think that maybe was the main thing. Because when you’re on the field and you’re there, you’re playing the game. It was just amazing to be a player on the field there.”
In the closing stages of Sunday’s game, Clifford was joined on the pitch by the vastly-experienced Grainne Kenneally. A part of the Kildare panel since 2020, Kenneally previously lined out in the colours of Waterford and was on the Deise side that overcame the Lilywhites in an All-Ireland IFC decider eight years ago.
With both Waterford and Cork currently enjoying senior status, there is every chance that they could line out against them in next year’s Brendan Martin Cup. Given she is familiar with a number of players within Shane Ronayne’s set-up, Clifford would relish a potential showdown against her native county.
“Looking forward now to next year and hopefully getting a rattle off them, see how it goes. One of my club-mates from home, Shauna Kelly, is on the Cork senior panel as well. A few of the girls, I would have played with them in college.
“To be up and competing against the likes of Cork, Dublin and Meath, they’re all the counties you want to be up competing against. It will be great.”
Even though Eadestown footballers Clifford and Kenneally have played alongside each other on 12 different occasions at the inter-county grade, they are yet to do so at club level. This due to the fact that Clifford didn’t play in the local leagues this year for the Tipper South outfit because of her commitments with Kildare.
This is set to change on Thursday week, 31 August, when Eadestown begin their quest for a fourth consecutive Kildare title with a trip to Moorefield. It might seem unusual to be waiting this long for a club bow after becoming such a mainstay with a county, but given she already has a sense of familiarity with the group, Clifford believes it will be a smooth transition.
“I was getting a lot of stick from having never played a club game with Eadestown yet, but I have an All-Ireland with Kildare! It was just the way it worked out. I’m really looking forward to it, because they’re a great bunch of girls and they welcomed me the second I came onto the scene.
“Even the few years I was just training with them, they’d be checking up on my matches at home. I’d be getting best luck messages from them and everything.
“I’ve been training with them for a few years, I know the girls, I know the craic. Really looking forward to getting to play with them properly now,” Clifford added.