Irish Indo - Greatest players of all time ranked in every position

From what I saw of Canavan when I was younger, he was a good player alright. I looked up a few youtube highlights of his in the past few days. He was a great point scorer, as is Clifford. But Clifford offers more - better goal scorer (at least I think he is, based on the lack of goals in any videos I have seen of Canavan. I could be wrong on that). Better physical presence in terms of fetching the ball as a full forward, and driving past players. But from the videos that I have seen, Canavan was better than I had ever recalled him to be.

I can never understand this constant utterance that Clifford is hyped but hasn't proven it or hasn't done enough in his performances to justify the praise. What on earth have people been watching for the past 5 years?

If we're to take All Ireland semi finals and finals as the pinnacle of the sport, as its been for 140 odd years, then Clifford has done more to justify his name in these conversations than basically anyone. He's given top class displays, either motm or very close to it*, in by my count 6 separate AI semis or finals. 2019 semi v Tyrone and 2019 final replay v Dublin, 2021 semi v Tyrone, 2022 semi v Dublin, 2022 final v Galway, 2023 semi v Derry. *obviously wasn't winning it in games his team lost

What other modern day players has that many utterly top class big game performances to their name? Fenton comes close, i can argue 6 at a push. Gooch is close but max i can get is 5. Jack McCaffrey has 4 motm awards in semis+, which is amazing given the time he missed. That's it in the modern day. And Clifford is 25, probably only 30-40% through his career

Just looking at Kerry forwards that I saw in my lifetime, I would put Spillane, Liston, Sheehy, Donaghy, Cooper, Egan, O'Donoghue and Fitzgerald ahead of Clifford at this point. Clifford might be better than some of them in the end, but he has a long way to go and there are a few I left out who could run him close, I haven't even mentioned Ger Power.

Cooper, Fitzgerald, Spillane, Sheehy, Liston, Donaghy would be my front six of best Kerry forwards.

However, going back to Breheny's list, only one player from the six-in-a-row shows up his bias.

Well he's only 24! Senior all Ireland, 2 minors, 2 POTY, 4 or 5 all stars. Not to mention all his club honours. Like I said, the 2 cliffords and Sean ó shea aside this an average kerry squad.

Take Clifford out of this kerry team and they would be a monaghan or a roscommon ( no offence or either).

Also medals don't tell full story. Look at Paul Conroy winning poty and 1st ever all star at 35 years old. A wonderful footballer, but didn't get the recognition of less talented players.

Yes, he is only 24, which means he has time to prove me wrong.

James McCarthy announced his retirement yesterday, nine times All-Ireland winner, captain on one of those years, a level of achievement that would put him well above Clifford, but, even then, still not guaranteed to be on an all-time great team.

Are you saying Liston never had a quiet match or was never held? I don't believe it. Liston is lucky he was a target man surrounded by brilliant footballers. Same with Donaghy twenty odd years ago, a very good target man but he needed brilliant forwards around him. Clifford has the weight of the entire county on his shoulders alone and he has scored a huge amount, he carried them to the All Ireland 2 years ago. I don't know how anyone can say Liston was a better footballer than Clifford.

That's a great point. Liston and Donaghy had so many free scoring forwards around them there was very little pressure on them to score.

Whereas with Clifford if he doesn't score who will? And of course the mass defences of recent years means Clifford or shane Walsh or con have to beat 3 or 4 players to get a score.

I think that’s perhaps a little unfair. While winning or not winning a shedload of medals doesn’t automatically make you the best on your position, some players by the sheer level of success and managing to stay at the very top, deserve to be in the conversation based on that at least in part- think Cluxton, who basically redefined his role and then made it part of a winning machine for a decade . I think that in the case of that great Dublin side it will probably only be after they all have retired that everyone will actually acknowledge how good the individuals on that team were, but they would have several players in the mix, which is just one of many things that makes Brehenys list a bit baffling

I think anybody using a count of medals as a barometer for measuring an individual player's quality is either very disingenuous or simply doesn't think before they speak.

We're talking about a team sport here. There are numerous examples of superb players who never won an All-Ireland by virtue of their place of birth and lack of quality teammates. That's all there is to it.

There's only so much one player can do. He can't beat 15 on his own!! And none of the players picked ever did that either.

But the problem I'm referring to is not that the great players from the great teams are not great, they are. It's that there are other great players who unfortunately for them were surrounded by poor teammates, poor managers, poor county boards and worst of all poor tradition (ie. a losing mentality).

There have been many players who would have starred on All-Ireland winning teams if they were from another county. There were a few posts previous that went along the lines of 'x is not as great as y because x has more All-Ireland medals'. That is just incredibly narrow-minded and simplistic.

Funny you should mention Peter Canavan, a player I've already wrote about on this thread as being right up there at the very top when greatness is being discussed. The teams he won his All-Irelands with were full of quality. But he was already widely known as a great player by the time they eventually came around. He was at the very end of his already great career and one of his greatest ever performances was in the losing All-Ireland appearance of 1995 where he scored all but one of his side's points. He did everything he could to drag an average team over the line and they only lost by one point. If he hadn't been lucky enough to have the higher-quality players come along late in his career, I still think many would regard him just as highly. I certainly would.