Better to be talked about and never talk at all.
Stephen Cluxton yesterday hit the record for Championship appearances, creeping by Tomás O'Sé. Cluxton has been standing in front of Hill 16 for longer than the world has been buying iPods, but despite the fact he has loomed over seventeen summers, nobody really knows who he is. He has shunned the media to such an extent that a journalist's best hope of getting any copy from Cluxton is to gather at the foot of the Hogan Stand in September.
Therefore, Cluxton is one of the very few elite footballers who can be judged solely by what he has done on the field. But this is an incredibly rich resource: he is the most influential footballer of his era, and perhaps of all time.
There have been a few great players who have dictated how their teams play, but few have ever changed how pretty much every side in the country view the game.
For Cluxton has done something remarkable: he has weaponised the opposition score. So much of coaching in Gaelic football is focused on rebuffing complacency, and Jim Gavin is no different: Dublin's ferocious competition for places is his main bulwark against it, supported by his filling interviews with platitudes talking up the opposition (a considerable challenge across much of the Leinster Championship).
So while Gavin defends against it in his own team, Cluxton targets it in the opposition. Opponents are at their weakest int he few seconds after they have scored, so Cluxton has refined his kick outs to the extent that the ball leaves the tee no more than ten seconds after the opposition attempt on goal. He is the man most responsible for the increased conditioning of Gaelic footballers; the speed of his restarts have turned Dublin games in Croke Park into a kind of Darwinian experiment.
Stephen Cluxton is the man most responsible for the fact that half-backs in Gaelic Football today are middle-distance runners.
And make no mistake that it is his tactic. Alan Brogan wrote in his most recent Sunday Independent column that "the notorious Dublin kick-out strategies over the year are by and large designed by Stephen. They were endorsed by Jim Gavin and Pat Gilroy before him, but Stephen is the brain behind them".
There are more concrete legacies: 13 Leinster titles (more than Wicklow, Longford, Carlow, Westmeath, and Kilkenny put together), four All-Ireland titles, four National League titles, and five All-Stars.
Meath defender Mickey Burke was our guest on this week's edition of Talking Points, our weekly show in partnership with Sky Sports GAA, and being a veteran of Championship jousts with Dublin, he singled out Cluxton's influence above all else:
They are probably one of the greatest teams of all time. As a Meath man, it brings me no pleasure to say that, but they're brilliant.
Stephen Cluxton's restarts are a huge part of their game. Jimmy McGuinness from Donegal tried to study them before, and said he found no consistent pattern.
Their movement out the field is really good, and Cluxton is so good, once he puts the ball on the tee he will find them every time. So if you're gaining possession from every one of your kick-outs, you are on a winning note straight away.
The irony of Cluxton's career is that we may feel we don't know him today, but a glance at any Championship match involving his contemporaries will prove that we recognise more about him than we thought.
