We had a big thick book of myths and legends at home growing up. It was one of those doorstop jobs with assorted tales from around the globe, all Norse gods and Inca folk heroes and Bedouin lore. There was an Irish chapter in it too, there alongside all the rest. For a nine-year-old in the 1980s, there was something reassuring about seeing it. As though it was somehow a kind of permission for us to have heroes too.
The tale of Lugh, The Warrior Hero was about a soldier who arrived at Tara and asked to be allowed in to join the Tuatha Dé Danann. Problem was, the doorkeeper wasn’t having it. Nobody got in to join the Tuatha Dé Danann unless they came offering a skill that wasn’t already present within the walls of Tara.
So when Lugh said he was a warrior, he was told they had warriors already. When he said he was a poet, the doorkeeper told him they were good for poets too. A historian? Got ‘em. A hero? Full up with them. A harpist? Nope. A craftsman? A champion? A swordsman? A sorcerer? Sorry Lugh, no dice on any of them. Tara already has each of them, in ample amounts.
Lugh took a moment before knocking on the door one final time. “Do you have anyone who can do all of these things?” The doorkeeper had no choice but to usher him in.
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This week in Donegal, Lugh left town. Michael Murphy played half his life as a Donegal senior footballer and for most of it he wasn’t just their best player – he was the best they had at each of the constituent parts of the game. He was the best on the edge of the square. He was the best midfielder. The best free taker. Those are just the obvious things.
Get right down to the nuts and bolts of the sport itself and he was a cut above in those too. Nobody tackled harder. Nobody ran better lines to get into scoring positions. His handpasses off left and right were bespoke and directive, as though they were messages to the receiver telling them what he wanted them to do. For Paul Durcan and Shaun Patton, he was always the fail-safe if the opposition pushed up on the kick-out.
Combined, it added up to a miracle of a footballer. For a decade and a half, Donegal had various players who could do various things. They had one player who could do all of the things.
He frequently did, too. On big days and other days. You’d be at a league game in February and the crowd would be stamping their feet to keep warm and the summer would feel a million years away. And then, out of nothing, Murphy would claw down a big catch and roll out on a loop and ping one over the bar on the run and everyone would do that half-laugh, half-purr thing that only the special ones bring out. And then he’d drift out to midfield and catch the kick-out and send one of the wing backs haring off his shoulder and Donegal would be away again.
On their best days, he was a catalyst for everything. The goal against Mayo in the 2012 final. The rope-a-dope against Dublin in 2014. Donegal had five Ulster titles and an All-Ireland in their whole history before he started playing senior. He retires with them on 10 Ulsters and two All-Irelands.
That said, it was probably what he brought on their lesser days that Donegal will miss the most. There was a qualifier against Meath in Navan in 2017. It was a soupy night in July and neither side was any good. No real cohesion on show, both trying to bring through a gang of young players, visible nerves everywhere you looked.
Murphy put in one of those evenings where you could see him deciding in real time that he was going to have to put order on proceedings. When a couple of Donegal forwards turned down shots in the first half, he took it on himself to kick two in a row. When the game opened up in the second half and a few of his team-mates found a bit more adventure, he was everywhere, winning possession and hunting them up the pitch. Patrick McBrearty scored two more points than him – seven to five – and kicked the winning score in injury-time. But there was no question about the man of the match.
It was on nights like those that all the arguments about what Murphy’s best position was just basically evaporated. His best position was wherever he damn well chose to be at any given stage. He had such a natural feel for what a game needed at a particular time that it would have been a terrible waste to pin him to one area of the pitch. No player of his era – and very few of any era – more often looked like a countyman playing a club match.
In the final reckoning, there’s no doubt Donegal underachieved dreadfully in the second half of his career. Leaving Croke Park on that day of insanity against Dublin in 2014, nobody would have believed for a second that Murphy would never again play in an All-Ireland semi-final. Year after year since then, Donegal have looked the part before falling apart. It’s hard to shake the notion that if he thought there was more in the current group, he’d keep trucking for another year.
Not to be, however. Michael Murphy has retired and it’s an enormous loss for Donegal.
For the rest of us, too.
