Michael Murphy’s comeback didn’t bring Donegal an All-Ireland but it did bring him closure

Never go back, they say. They’re wrong.

No, Michael Murphy didn’t win his second All-Ireland. He didn’t drag Donegal to their third, didn’t find himself on that emerald-jewelled road lined with his people singing Sam back to the hills. Instead, he did something far more important. He spared himself a lifetime of wondering whether he had it in him.

[ Michael Murphy announces intercounty retirementOpens in new window ]

Murphy was 35 years old when it was announced, two years ago to the day, that he was coming back to play for Donegal again. He’d got married in late 2023 and had spent the 2024 championship as a pundit. When Jim McGuinness’s first year back in charge ended with a semi-final defeat to Galway, Murphy was sitting in the BBC box in Croke Park, yapping away with Oisin McConville and Mickey Harte and Philly McMahon. He had been perfectly happy in his retirement. Until he wasn’t.

McGuinness had asked him back ahead of that 2024 season but Murphy didn’t bite. What changed? Lots of things. Donegal had come within a kick of a ball of their fourth ever final. Armagh, against whom he’d watched his old compadres grind out an epic Ulster title win in May, were All-Ireland champions in July. The new rules were coming in, after he’d been personally involved with devising them.

So much had changed since his retirement in 2022. First and foremost, Donegal were contenders again. It had always been a stain on football in the county that their shock-the-world overturning of Dublin in 2014 had been Murphy’s last appearance in an All-Ireland semi-final.

He was 25 playing that game. That Donegal were perennially left with their noses pressed up against the glass in the years that followed was obviously a factor in his exit in 2022. Clearly, if he’d thought there was another All-Ireland run in them, he’d have hung around.

He didn’t have to come back, either. The mere mention of Michael Murphy’s name would still have been guaranteed to make generations of Donegal people go misty-eyed whether he’d strapped on the boots again or not. When Brendan Devenney was asked whether Murphy was Donegal’s greatest ever, he replied that if you cut Murphy in half, he’d be number one and number two. Nobody was ever really inclined to argue.

So why put himself through it? Because he could. Because he’d be retired long enough. Because McGuinness is a shaman who makes anything seem possible. Because the game is the game and we’re all just kids.

[ Michael Murphy: ‘I was coming back in to help in every way possible that I could’Opens in new window ]

“I was coming back to help in every way possible that I could,” he said in July 2025, standing outside the Donegal team bus after he’d finally played in – and won – another All-Ireland semi-final. “Whether it was for five minutes in a game, whether it was to help training, whether it was whatever else – that’s really what was in my head.

“You probably weren’t going to be back the same way you were – that’s always the way when you push on in years and you’re not playing football for a couple of years. So I’ve made peace with that, and that’s what I continue to make peace with. What way can you help the team? What way can you help the county? That’s the kind of mindset that I was in and that I probably still am in.”

Was he as good the second time around? Probably not. It’s a dumb question though – very few players in the history of football have been as good as early-to-mid-career Michael Murphy. The better line of inquiry is whether or not he added enough to make coming back worth it. On that score, there’s no argument to be had.

[ Ciarán Murphy: Return of the magical Michael Murphy bodes well for DonegalOpens in new window ]

In his two seasons back in the game, Murphy won a sixth Ulster medal, a first National League, a fourth All Star. For the first time in his career, he made the shortlist for Footballer of the Year – at 36, becoming the oldest outfield player ever to be in the final three.

His 0-52 total in 2025 was by a distance the most he’d scored in one season across his career. Even if you classify his eight two-pointers in old money, he still put up 44 scores in Donegal’s run to last year’s final. According to GaelicStats.com, the most he’d ever scored in a season before that was 1-35 in 2018. He made Donegal better in 2025 than they had been in 2024. Simple as that.

But the air undeniably went out of the balloon this year. Donegal had a weirdly inconsistent time of it, and Murphy wasn’t immune. He was reacting to things a beat slower and, probably not unrelated, found himself in disciplinary bother.

The punch on Dylan Casey in the league final against Kerry soured plenty of people against him and set off a slow-burn chain reaction for the biggest controversies of the summer. The lack of a red card for the Casey punch led directly to the flare-up in Killarney, which led to the whole McGuinness-Ger Brennan-Jarlath Burns brouhaha, which eventually ended with the Dublin manager issuing a statement through a solicitor calling out the GAA president.

[ Darragh Ó Sé: Kerry should have dealt with Michael Murphy the moment he punched Dylan CaseyOpens in new window ]

Even his greatest admirers concede that Murphy has always had a swinging arm in him, easily dismissed as the law of the jungle in the good times. But when you’re in your 37th year and the game’s not going for you, the swinging arm that punched the ball loose in your 20s only has to miss by inches. Suddenly, you’re a cheap shot artist outside your county and your people are making excuses for you inside it.

Murphy wouldn’t have needed telling that time was up. He scored 2-32 in Glenswilly’s run to the Donegal semi-final last month and so nearly hauled them to their first final since 2016. But he’ll turn 38 the week after next year’s All-Ireland final. Whatever role he has by then – pundit, fan or team selector – it’s for the other Donegal players to do it now.

Nobody has ever done more on the pitch to show them the way.