Clifford and Walsh show - Dazzling duo deliver on biggest stage

The old-timers who are instinctively inclined to swoon at the thought of a Kerry-Galway All-Ireland final had been warned that they were talking hokum - and that they shouldn't be expecting anything more than the usual 'chess match'.

Worse again, they may even have to brace for an "intriguing" game. Oh no, no more intrigue. Anything but that.

Both teams were now fully in hoc to modern practices and were prone to the deployment of sweepers and even double sweepers and the like. Galway, in particular, would want to gather a phalanx of spoilers around David Clifford to stop him getting into his stride, in so far as that's possible.

It didn't quite turn out like that. While defences were on their game and goal chances were thin on the ground, the narrative that ultimately emerged was a shootout between the two most lavishly gifted forwards on show, possibly in the game.

Walsh v Clifford. Their dual for supremacy at either end of the pitch will likely endure as the defining memory of this final.

The are two of most celebrated forwards in the sport, yet Clifford was held to belong to a different stratosphere.

He was the anointed one, the boy genius from his days as a minor, with no apparent weakness in his arsenal. It was inevitable since his teenage years that he would win a stack of All-Irelands. The idea that he might have to wait too much longer was unthinkable. Hadn't he waited long enough?

Clifford is already often touted as one of the greatest to play the game while Walsh, 29 this year, hadn't even won an All-Star yet.

The Kilkerrin-Clonberne attacker was always portrayed as a more mercurial figure, electric on his day, a stylish match-winner but prone to the odd brainfart. He hadn't scored freely against Armagh or Derry.

And