Tadhg Kennelly has never spoken to David Clifford

Tadhg Kennelly has quashed rumours that he's been in contact with Kerry's latest underage sensation.

David Clifford already has an All-Ireland minor title and a Hogan Cup medal and he already has the entire country talking about him before he even begins his final championship campaign as an underage player. His rise has been so spectacular that chat began even last year about him making the move to professional sport and joining an AFL team. The better Clifford gets, the more paranoid everyone in the Kingdom grows and the Aussies' International Head of Recruitment, Tadhg Kennelly, would've heard a couple of hisses in his direction in the last few months. https://twitter.com/TadhgKennelly/status/862550940632535040 But the Kerry native has firmly set the record straight regarding his links with David Clifford. When contacted by The GAA Hour, Kennelly confirmed the extent of his relationship with the player.

"I've never spoken to Clifford, nor has any AFL club," he said. "Even if he does go, which is really unlikely, the numbers stack up against him making it."

The discussion was talked about in detail on the latest GAA Hour football show (from 6:45). The talk gathered momentum after Kerry legend Tomás Ó Sé used his Irish Independent column to hit out at the job that Kennelly does.

"If I met him tomorrow, I’d say straight up, 'Tadhg, I’ve nothing against you personally. But I hate what you’re doing,' Ó Sé said. "Because people in Kerry are sick of this. A lot of Tadhg’s former team-mates are sick of this too, they just don’t feel comfortable saying it. But I think Clifford leaving would be the straw that broke the camel’s back."

Of course, things snowball when you're as good as Clifford and you produce magic on a weekly basis. Kennelly hasn't even been in touch with him though. But some Kerry men are already doing remarkable things out there. https://www.instagram.com/p/BT8tQU-ljXj/?taken-by=geelongcats&hl=en