Michael Murphy hopes the slide in Donegal has bottomed out, but the county’s 2012 All-Ireland winning captain knows there are no guarantees next year will be any better than a very difficult 2023 season.
He is viewed by many as a Donegal manager of the future, but Murphy says it will certainly not be the immediate future. The time is not right for him to step up. He doesn’t see himself as a selector on a management team in 2024 either, though Murphy would like to help out with underage teams in the county’s academy if that messy situation gets resolved.
However, he feels it is vitally important a new Donegal senior football manager is appointed swiftly. The deadline for applications has been set for July 21st.
“The way the senior management position lingered out last year and the lateness of that [was not helpful],” says Murphy, who retired in advance of the 2023 season. “I think it’s a key appointment [this year] that needs to be done sooner rather than later for things to get cracking on.
“Is it [the position of Donegal manager] appealing with the way things have gone on over the last year? No, it’s not. It’s not ideal, but you have to start somewhere.
“It’s not nice for all of these things to be out in public, but if it means it is the best for moving forward and things can start getting right from now on, then that’s the way it has to be. But only if things start to be done right from now on.”
It was a difficult year for Donegal, on and off the pitch. Paddy Carr stepped down as manager midseason, while Aidan O’Rourke, who acted as interim boss for the championship, quit following their defeat to Tyrone last month.
But there was also the very public collapse of the academy system in the county with Karl Lacey walking away from his role, a controversy that eventually led to an independent review of affairs in Donegal GAA.
Murphy feels there are several matters that need to be addressed before the county can genuinely build again.
“From flicking through the report, the academy 100 per cent is a priority but is it a priority over something else? I don’t see it that way, I see them all up there as priorities.
“Your new senior team manager coming in and just the overall governance of how things have been done and carried out within the county, I think all three of them are right up there.”
Having been relegated to Division Two of the National League for 2024, the threat of the Tailteann Cup hangs over Donegal now. If they don’t get their house in order then they could leave themselves vulnerable to such a scenario, believes Murphy.
“It is a live possibility. I think it has been shown this year, Cork were a game or two away from it,” he says.
“So, everything is live and possible during the National League campaign. But before we get there as a county, we need to get the ball rolling, we need to get a new manager and get everything in place.
“I have no doubt about the ability of that group, the introduction in a forced way of the younger lads, it has been a difficult year for them but it has been great that they have got seven, eight, nine, 10 games for Donegal and that will stand to those younger players next year.
“I have no doubt that there is still ability there and if we can harness back in the players who have gone, have Patrick McBrearty back, Oisín Gallen back again, Ryan McHugh getting back in and around there, it is still a team that is capable of pushing on and doing things.”
It has been a strange summer for Murphy, watching the championship unfold from the sidelines, but in his first season out of the game he has become an insightful and informative analyst on GAAGO.
And while he remains unsure about what the future holds for him in the media arena, Murphy has no regrets over his decision to step away from the intercounty game last November.
“The Donegal-Tyrone match was tricky to be at, it was certainly difficult to be watching lads who you shared the dressingroom with for so long,” he says. “And for the first time in 16 years you weren’t part of a Donegal senior team, but at no stage did it get to the fact that you said to yourself it was the wrong decision.
“You might have got an inkling every now and then like before the hop ball in the Tyrone game it’d be nice to be stuck in there. But I’m no fool in terms of what’s required and to throw yourself in there you need to be training from October and I wasn’t doing that last year.”
– Michael Murphy was speaking ahead of Sunday’s Electric Ireland All-Ireland minor football final between Derry and Monaghan in Armagh at 1pm.
