SHORTLY BEFORE A Donegal club game between Glenswilly and Gaoth Dobhair, two inter-county teammates who were playing on opposite sides, passed each other in the dressing-room hallways.
“Yes, Murph,” came a greeting from 2012 All-Ireland-winning defender Éamon McGee. He was crossing paths with his Glenswilly opponent Michael Murphy as they diverted into their respective dressing-rooms. Murphy is known for his softly spoken demeanour and mild-mannered way, but that’s for his everyday persona.
There’s a different Michael Murphy reserved for matters on the pitch, and McGee knew immediately which version was turning up that day.
“He just looked at me,” McGee recalls in conversation with The42 following Murphy’s recent retirement from the Donegal footballers after an incredible 15-year career.
“He nodded the head and walked by. That was the competitor starting in him. You see the way the Tyrone and Armagh boys view him – he was getting it but he was also giving it.
“You’d try to wind him up but he would just go at you. And then the whole thing switches off then [after the game] and he goes back to this great guy after the final whistle.”
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Murphy was just 18 when he made his senior inter-county debut in 2007. But even then, he was already an established and exciting talent in Donegal. He reached his first Donegal SFC final that year with Glenswilly, and by 2009, he was crowned the Young Footballer of The Year. The following season, he captained the Donegal U21s to the All-Ireland final where they fell just short against Dublin.
But, had circumstances been different, Murphy’s life could have been in another part of the country. His father Mick originally comes from near Ballina in Mayo, but his work as a Garda brought him to Donegal and the Glenswilly club, where he became a valued member.
He was a club player for some 34 or 35 years and later became a coach, a role which he still performs today. Along with another Glenswilly man, Adrian Glackin, Mick Murphy helps manage the Glenswilly Reserves and U20s.
It was thanks to Adrian’s father, Finbarr, that Mick Murphy got involved with the club when he first moved to the area, but friends from Mayo never let them forget that young Michael could have ended up playing for the Green and Red.
“A lot of my friends from Mayo would always say that,” says Adrian ,about how Glenswilly benefited from a good turn of fortune, “but after five minutes with Michael, you can see he just loves Donegal and Glenswilly. He’s had opportunities to go abroad and he’s stuck with Glenswilly. He’s given his entire career to club and county and you can’t fault him.
“Mick [father] would put 100% into everything but he wouldn’t have Michael’s out and out ability. But the drive definitely comes from Mick. I don’t know where he got that playing ability.”
Unsurprisingly, there were big expectations associated with Murphy from a young age. He always had a march on other players at his grade.
“Ach yeah,” Glackin continues. “Michael was a big lad from when he was 12 or 13. He won skills competitions in Donegal and obviously, he was playing for St Eunan’s College and getting a bit of recognition there. He made his [adult] club debut when he was 15 in the Ulster intermediate championship.
“They were trying to get him in the team for quite a while before that but I suppose nowadays, you wouldn’t even be allowed to play at 15. His parents were sensible too and kept him until they felt he was ready to play.
“But it was never a surprise. He always stood out. He was a man before he was ever a boy.
”He came into a team that was already decent. They had already won an U21 B title in 2003, and an intermediate championship in 2005. In 2007, we reached our first-ever senior county final which we lost to St Eunan’s.
“Michael was already a huge player for us at that stage when he was only 17.”
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From 2011 up to his final season with Donegal, Murphy held the role of captain, and held it well. He was just 21 when then-manager Jim McGuinness appointed him to that position, as they unexpectedly progressed all the way to the All-Ireland semi-final. They played a defensive style of football that many couldn’t warm to, but they just fell short of succeeding with it when they lost out to eventual winners Dublin in the All-Ireland semi-final.
Murphy was the general again the following year when Donegal surpassed that mark by lifting the Sam Maguire after outgunning Mayo in the final.
Rory Gallagher would go on to succeed Jim McGuinness as Donegal manager, with Declan Bonner later taking over the reins. But even as the management position changed hands through the years, they all agreed on Murphy’s place in the choir. They each entrusted him with that captaincy job.
McGee remembers when Murphy was first handed that important leadership task, and says that no-one doubted the call despite Murphy’s young age.
“There wasn’t [any surprise] but when you look back, there should have been. It should have been us older members who said, “He’s a bit young, he’s 21 and he’s getting the call ahead of us.”
“Lads like Neil, [Christy] Toye, Rory Kavanagh. But he was earmarked for greatness from a long way out. We all knew about this young fella coming up who Jim McGuinness had more or less made his general with the U21 team. It was just a natural progression.
“We know he can lead but he led by example; he never gave these big rousing speeches.
“I think at the time, McGuinness was trying to build most of the team around that U21 team, and he probably didn’t realise that he needed as much from the older generation to bridge the gap.
“It made sense for Michael to be captain and we didn’t question it at all.”
Those leadership qualities are evident in Murphy’s club game too. He has won three senior county titles with Glenswilly in 2011, 2013 and 2016, scooping the Player of The Match award in all three deciders. They also contested the 2013 Ulster SFC final but were despatched by Derry side Ballinderry on the day.
“We scored 1-8 in the 2011 county final and he scored 1-7,” says Glackin, summing up Murphy’s impressive forward play.
“He was just unplayable in that final and in the other two finals, he scored 1-5 in each and won man-of-the-match.”
It’s expected, or at least assumed, that Murphy will be the Donegal manager one day. He’s already building up a healthy coaching CV having taken charge of the Letterkenny IT footballers, while also managing the Glenswilly minors to a Division 1A final this year.
“The brand of football they played was excellent,” Glackin notes. “It gave everyone in the club a lift after the senior team got relegated [to Division 2].”
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Being a defender, McGee often came up against Murphy on the pitch but it was brother Neil — who also retired from Donegal this year — who marshalled the towering full-forward most of the time at training.
Éamon says that the pair are often labelled as “two crabid men coming off each other”, such was the nature of the tough exchanges between them. A showdown between arguably the best players in their respective positions was no doubt an absorbing sight at the Donegal in-house games.
Whenever he did come into contact with Murphy, Éamon had his ways of containing the star man’s influence. But when faced with a talent of Murphy’s distinction, there are some attributes that just can’t be curtailed.
“You put the ball in front of me and Murphy, I was able to win it or get the hand in. But the thing I struggled with was the way he was able to use his strength to win the ball coming in. He was able to shield himself in the same vein as Kieran Donaghy.
“He was also very smart. There was a county final where he used the wee soccer touch to flick the ball along the ground. It was just his awareness and intelligence. It looks simple but not a lot of players can do that body shift.”
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Murphy’s decision to retire from top-level football triggered some surprise. It certainly caught McGee “on the hop” who recently found himself defending Murphy’s ability when others questioned what he had left in the tank. Most would agree that it was Murphy’s choice to step away, rather than a call he was forced to make due to a lack of game time or a shift in his position within the squad.
In the aftermath of his exit, the tributes have rolled in. His highlight reel has inspired most of the glowing remarks, including that famous goal he scored against Mayo in the 2012 All-Ireland final. McGee started that move when he won possession deep in Donegal’s half of the pitch.
Three transfers of possession later, including a kickpass from the boot of Karl Lacey, and the ball was landing into Murphy’s hands. He shook off his marker Kevin Keane with a hard shuffle before firing the ball into the roof of the Mayo net. It was a move that came directly from the Jim McGuinness playbook.
“We’d spent a few days in Johnstown House working,” says McGee. “We talked about Mayo’s weakness in the full-back line and I was in a good spot that time. I was winning the ball from whoever I was marking and every time I was putting it in, it was terrible.
“McGuinness came up to me and said, ‘Do you know what you’ll do, Eamon? Get the ball and give it off.’ So if you watch me, I gave the ball and went back to my man. And if it was Karl Lacey or Neill McGee, they were powering on and making the run.
“We talked about the competitive diagonal ball with the view of exposing the Mayo full-back line. Lay it off, lay it off, lay it off. Lacey got onto it eventually and delayed it instead of just giving it. If you go back to the 2012 final, the first two balls were just about getting it in. The first was blocked and the second was a shite ball.
“But Lacey delayed it. He took his time and gave the right one in. Murphy’s movement inside helped it and he won the ball, and bang.
“But, don’t worry, I never let him forget that only for me…..”
Murphy’s character has also been highlighted following his departure, with McGee likening him to Daniel O’Donnell or the iconic Donegal landmark — Mount Errigal.
Around Glenswilly, it’s an honour for them to know that they produced a player who has five Ulster titles with Donegal, three All-Stars and who also brought the Sam Maguire back to winter in their surroundings a decade ago.
But Murphy’s selfless work endears himself to the locals as much — if not more — than his performances for the club.
“Michael never seeks publicity,” says a proud Glackin. “There’s so much good of what he does that isn’t seen. There’s many a time he’s gone up and visited people in the hospice to give them a lift. And he goes to the hospital to visit people, and he does it on the quiet. Somebody might tell him that someone is ill and he’ll go up to them. He’s great with his time.
“He’d be at training and there might be an U10 training session before. He’d go in to talk to them and by the end, he knows them all by name. You’re just thinking back to when you were a kid and it’s all about giving inspiration to them.
“He’s a born winner on the pitch but off the pitch, he’s a gentleman and has never changed. He keeps his feet on the ground and that’s down to the good family he comes from.
“They’re the heart and soul of Glenswilly.”
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