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Stephen Clifford

Australian rules footballer

Correspondence, annotated notebooks and portrait silhouettes prepared for research
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Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionNov 21, 2024
Entity authorityQ7608908
Source-derived summary

Stephen "Bomber" Clifford (born 18 September 1956) is a former Australian rules footballer in the South Australian National Football League (SANFL), playing for the Port Adelaide Football Club and in the Victorian Football League (VFL), playing for the Collingwood Football Club.

Clifford made his senior VFL debut for Collingwood as a 16-year-old in 1973, won the Gardiner Medal for Best and Fairest player in the VFL reserves the next season but could only amass 38 senior games for Collingwood until 1978. Recruited by SANFL club Port Adelaide early in the 1978 season, Clifford immediately starred, winning the first of his three club Best and Fairests that year. Clifford played in Port Adelaide's premiership teams of 1979, 1980, and 1981 - each of these years corresponding to a Collingwood grand final loss. Clifford won further best & fairest awards in 1980 and 1983. While Clifford may be less remembered than other higher-profile Port players of his era, the fact that he won three club best and fairest awards over a six-year period is testament to his talent and consistency.

Editorial summary

This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “Stephen Clifford” as australian rules footballer. Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.

Editorial reviewA productive starting point for separating a subject’s documented career from later reputation and commemoration. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—1956, 1973, 1978, 1979—that can be checked directly. The linked authority record independently contributes the date 1956-09-18. The account is most persuasive where Stephen, Clifford and Australian can be independently traced.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

The subject matters to the people & ideas register because the source frames it as australian rules footballer. Its deeper value depends on whether names, dates, institutions and citations support that framing.

Evidence profile

Chronology provides the most reliable spine for this subject; interpretation should follow only after identities and dates are secure. The source revision retrieved here is dated Nov 21, 2024. The linked authority identifier is Q7608908. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1956, 1973, 1978 and 1979.

Critical limits

A concise life account rarely captures disputed attribution, private networks or the changing language used to describe a career. The source lead contains qualifying language; that uncertainty should survive quotation, summary and reuse. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

How to read it

Read biographical claims against dates, named institutions and the cited references. Distinguish a subject’s later reputation from evidence produced during their lifetime.

Best used for
  • Establishing names and roles
  • Building a first chronology
  • Locating cited institutions
Verify next

Personal papers, civil or court records, institutional files and the scholarship cited by the source.

Three-step research path

  1. Establish the record: confirm the title “Stephen Clifford”, its source revision and the description used here.
  2. Expand the search: follow Stephen Clifford primary sources, Stephen Clifford archive and Stephen research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
  3. Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.

Questions for further research

  1. Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “Stephen Clifford”?
  2. Which primary records establish identity, chronology and institutional ties?
  3. How has the subject’s reputation changed across later accounts?
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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from Stephen Clifford” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.