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AARON KERNAN hopes that whoever is tasked with marking David Clifford today has slept well all week.

Kerry’s star forward is in flying form coming into the All-Ireland quarter-final against the Orchard at Croke Park.

Brendan Moran/Sportsfile

The two-time Footballer of the Year is the Championship’s top scorer with 7-37.

A whopping 7-27 of that is from play and the five-time All-Star winner helped himself to 3-7 in last Saturday’s preliminary quarter-final cruise against Cavan.

Those stats are enough to give any defender nightmares, with Armagh’s Barry McCambridge set to square up to him today.

Former Orchard defender Kernan admits Clifford is in the form of his life after a lacklustre 2024.

He believes the key to stopping the forward is to cut off his supply and that means shackling Kingdom stalwarts Seán O’Shea and Clifford’s older brother Paudie, who is named on the bench but is likely to feature.

The 2005 Young Footballer of the Year said: “You needed to sleep very easily this week if you’re on him — and know that he could kick 0-6, he could score 1-4.

“It’s a damage limitation job on David, especially if the ball is coming in early to him because it’s a different game than what it was last year.

“He looked like a hugely frustrated figure in every game last year.

“I think physically he looks in the shape of his life, but I think the energy that he’s playing with, he looks like he’s really possessed this year.

“He’s in unbelievable form and whoever’s on him will have a really difficult task.

“But it’s two or three key match-ups out the field that we need to shut down and we need to put pressure on those Kerry players.

“That’s Paudie Clifford, Seánie O’Shea because it’s the quality of ball and the amount of ball they get to him where the real damage is done.”

Clifford ran riot against the Breffni and could have scored more than he did.

But Meath showed how to stop the 26-year-old who made his Kerry debut in the 2018 National League.

The Kingdom have scored 14 goals in six Championship games this summer.

But they drew a blank against the Royals in a shock 1-22 to 0-16 defeat two weeks ago when Clifford’s supply lines from out the field were cut off.

Meath’s stranglehold in the middle gave Robbie Brennan’s men a platform to record their first Championship triumph over Kerry since the 2001 All-Ireland semi-final.

Injuries ruled out O’Shea, Paudie Clifford, Paul Geaney, Brian Ó Beaglaioch, Barry Dan O’Sullivan and Diarmuid O’Connor. But O’Shea and Ó Beaglaioch start today, with David’s brother Paudie and Geaney named on the bench.

Clifford Junior was limited to 0-5 against the Royals, including a free and a two-pointer.

And Kernan believes Armagh must use the Meath blueprint to curtail his threat.

MEATH IN THE MIDDLE

The four-time Ulster SFC winner said: “David said himself he could have potentially finished with a double hat-trick last weekend against Cavan.

“But the weekend before against Meath, they did a brilliant job in terms of shutting him down because they always had somebody who sprinted straight back to get goal-side of him.

“Whoever the full-back was — and it was predominantly Seán Rafferty — as he was being taken on by David Clifford, a second person was there to try to double up on him, so that the next pass had to go backwards, and then their scramble defence was kicked into gear.

“So that’s what Meath did really well and what Cavan didn’t do an awful lot of last weekend.

“Then Clifford ended up in one-on-one bouts, just particularly for the first goal he got, where he was able to step out on the left, burn his man, take his space and put it in the back of the net.

“That’s where Meath were really good the week previous, where a midfielder or a half-back got back and got goal-side, which meant that David had to turn back out.

“That’s the key thing. It’s shutting down particularly the likes of Paudie Clifford and Seán O’Shea, but it’s also, ‘If my man is out of the game, who can I help? Where do I need to go?’

“Don’t be standing idly by thinking, ‘I’m doing my job, my man’s not on the ball, he’s not a threat’.

“That’s irrelevant. David Clifford is always a threat, so can I help whoever happens to be on him?

“That takes a huge amount of work rate, hunger, a huge amount of focus, but it’s an All-Ireland quarter-final and it just simply has to happen.”

CROSSING THE WHITE LINE

Kernan retired from inter-county football in 2014 and soldiered on with Crossmaglen Rangers until November 2023.

He joined Sligo as a coach this year under clubmate Tony McEntee, but they departed the fold after their Tailteann Cup quarter-final loss to Fermanagh a fortnight ago.

Kernan admits it was a disappointing end to his brief spell with the Yeats men, but it’s back to basics now with the Cross Under-10s.

He said: “I loved it, but just gutted that it was over sooner than we would have hoped.

“It was a brilliant opportunity and I found it to be a brilliant experience in terms of working with the management team that was there and obviously the playing group. It was my first time really properly getting involved in any sort of a management set-up and I took a huge amount from it.

“It was just disappointing that they couldn’t have got over that game against Fermanagh and build on it, like the couple of Tailteann Cup semi-finals they’d reached previously.

“The goal was to go one step further, get to the final and win it this year, so not to have made it back to Croke Park, certainly for me personally and the whole group, it was a very disappointing one to have to walk away from Brewster Park that evening.

“But it was something I’m absolutely delighted to have done.

“I was straight back into the Crossmaglen Rangers Under-10s on the Monday night afterwards, so I’ve only been in and out.

“That’s the extent of the managerial career for the rest of the season anyway.”

l AARON KERNAN was speaking exclusively as a Gaelic games ambassador for BoyleSports ahead of today’s All-Ireland SFC quarter-finals.

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