By Daragh Small  

Kildare LGFA are in the midst of their 100km fundraising challenge, the Lidl National Football League is just around the corner, and on Thursday Lilywhites captain Grace Clifford returned to her day job.

2023 has just kicked off and it’s already a busy time to be an inter-county star but for this 28-year-old, the first week of January went by in a blur. She got engaged before the clock struck 12 on New Year’s Eve.

“It was a really lovely Christmas, it was nice and quiet at home. Then we were away in Belfast, we always go away for New Year’s,” said Clifford.

“But to get engaged then, that just topped it and finished it off nicely. It’s still hard to believe, I’m still in a bit of a shock to be honest.”

Clifford and her fiancé, Maurice Sexton, have been together almost a decade now and they finally announced their engagement last weekend.

It might be some time yet before they put together their wedding plans, especially considering their busy schedules but exciting times lie in store.

“We haven’t really thought too much about the wedding date yet,” said Clifford, who is Director of Extra Curricular Activites at Mount Sackville Secondary School.

“He plays hurling as well with his club at home. The biggest thing would be to work around the GAA calendar anyway. That’s the one thing I can give away, other than that there is only a small window now with the split season.

“Now, you run from inter-county straight into club. Fortunately, club for myself has been quite successful for the last two or three years but it has been running late.

“It will be a small window we will have but hopefully we will fit it in sometime soon.”

Clifford isn’t one for New Year’s resolutions, but she is looking for the people around Kildare and further afield to tap into their new mindsets for 2023 and get involved in the fundraising efforts currently taking place.

Having played football for most of her life, the Eadestown native is used to exercising the January blues away and with the new pep in her step, it will make it even easier this time around.

“The senior and minor teams have come together, all the players are involved and we are covering 100km in the month of January,” said Clifford.

“We are encouraging others to do so as well. We all know everyone likes to start the new year on a health and fitness buzz. We will be tracking it and posting it on social media and all the money raised will go directly to the senior and minor teams.

“It will be for basic funding for buses and food and stuff like that. These things, as you know with the cost of living and all of that, have gone up again even more. All donations will be hugely appreciated and definitely well needed.”

Kildare are looking to make strides on the field in 2023, too, after an up and down campaign last time out. They contested a Lidl National League semi-final, won the TG4 Leinster Intermediate title by defeating Wexford, but then lost out to the same opposition in the All-Ireland semi-final.

And there has been change at the helm with Sean Finnegan leaving the managerial hotseat to join Kevin McStay’s backroom team out west. Mayo legend Diane O’Hora received the promotion in his place.

“We already worked with her last year so even though she is in a new role with us, we already are familiar with how she runs things and she is familiar with us,” said Clifford.

“So that bit of continuity is really nice as well. We are working with her in a different capacity but to be fair nothing has changed in that sense. Even though she was a selector last year, she still led by example.

“Leading like how she does now in her managerial role, even though it differs, it is still quite similar to last year in a sense so it is nothing too new. She has brought in a new backroom team so that element has changed things for us but working with Diane, we all really enjoyed it with her last year.”

Kildare will also be boosted by a cohort of their successful underage talent making the step up while Roisin Byrne is back in the frame along with Triona Duggan, both returning from injury.

Their first League outing sees them clash with Down in a fortnight and Clifford is excited about getting going again, even with a busy schedule in store.

“It’s crazy how quick it comes along when you are back to pre-season in November. You are thinking how far it is away. But once that first League game starts, it’s literally game on game. It rolls straight into the Leinster championship, straight into the All-Ireland series,” said Clifford.

“It’s crazy, I can’t believe how close the first game is. Once that first game happens it literally just rolls into one and you are on the mad journey again very quickly.

“We want to do well in the League. We don’t need to focus too much on the past but maybe we took our eye off the ball a little bit last year in relation to the League.

“But I think it is different and it will suit us having the consecutive games and it not being the two groups. You have to play a semi-final to get into the final and all that. I think it will be a really good contest this year with the top two teams going straight into the Final.

“Hopefully that will suit us, and more games as well. Going back to that old format will stand to us, hopefully. The main aim as of now is to win our first game of the League, start on a positive note and keep the momentum going from there.”

And it’s all strictly positive for Clifford, the only question now is how exactly her fiancé managed to surprise her and pull off the shock proposal in the first place.

“As anyone who knows me will tell you, I’m a hard person to surprise because I sense everything,” said Clifford.

“I would always be thinking that I get a feeling something will happen, he seems a little bit nervous there or whatever. So how he managed to catch me off guard, he did it the best way possible, just very easy breezy.

“We bumped into someone we knew on the night and he was panicking because I said we will meet ye for you a drink after. He was saying, God, I’m planning to do this ringing in the New Year and this one is inviting people out with us.

“We left the restaurant and were casually walking to get a drink somewhere and he just did it then. That was the only way to surprise me to be honest, other than that I would have been on it!”  

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