KERRY STAR David Clifford is expected to be available for Sunday’s All-Ireland quarter-final clash with Mayo in Croke Park, as boss Jack O’Connor said today that the Fossa ace “should be okay” to play. 

Recent speculation suggested that Clifford was a doubt for Croke Park, and O’Connor was unwilling to go into too much detail.

But the Kingdom boss confirmed at a press briefing on Monday evening that there are no worries hanging over the three-time All-Star and that Clifford has trained away with the panel since the Munster final win over Limerick four weeks ago when a calf injury kept him out.

“He’s trained since the Munster final, so he should be okay,” replied O’Connor when asked about Clifford’s availability this weekend.

In his post-match interview after the Kingdom’s Munster final win, O’Connor confirmed that the 23-year-old had picked up a slight knock against Cork but was optimistic that it wasn’t serious.

“We weren’t being clever or anything but we thought it was going to come right but it just took a bit longer to come around than we thought. The medical advice was not to play him in this game.

“He’s gone back doing a bit, away from the full training. He’s started doing a bit yeah. I’d say he’ll be doing a good share of training next week hopefully.”

O’Connor did confirm corner-back Dylan Casey is out for the rest of Kerry’s involvement in the Championship because of an ankle injury sustained late on in the Munster final.

“He is gone for a couple of months, he has had an operation on his ankle,” O’Connor explained.

“We have a couple of other bits and pieces of muscle or soft-tissue injuries, but at this stage, I don’t want to go into detail because we’ll see as the week goes on. We have two more training sessions left this week to see if they’ll come through.”

O’Connor consequently did not elaborate on the progress of other injury doubts but acknowledged that Dara Moynihan and Dan O’Donoghue currently “are training away with the squad”.