Michael Murphy’s greatness lay in his self-sacrifice for Donegal

There is an image in people’s heads of what a full forward should look like. If we are all too young to remember Nicky Rackard in his pomp, we can at least picture Eoin “Bomber” Liston and Tony Doran in Croke Park in the 1970s, causing havoc under the dropping ball.

We interviewed the actor Brendan Gleeson last year, and when he told us he had played Gaelic football for St Finian’s in Swords once upon a time, we all immediately came to the same conclusion. Edge of the square, right? And of course, that’s exactly where he played.

There was a time when every county team needed a Vinnie Murphy or a Cormac Bonnar. Short kings Peter Canavan and Joe Deane showed us that another approach was possible, but the image in the public consciousness of what a full forward should look like remained. And Michael Murphy was that image made flesh.

And despite all the years playing far from the opposition’s goal, all the years slaving away in the middle third, hitting tackles, catching kickouts and making support runs, one question energised people for his entire career with Donegal: Why can’t they just put him on the edge of the square, and lorry ball down on top of him? And do it again, and again, and again …

If Jim McGuinness or Donegal hadn’t wanted us to keep asking that question about his positioning on the field, they could probably have done better than give him a 20-year lease on the number 14 jersey. Because while he looked like the consummate full-forward, and had all the ability in the world to be unstoppable in that position, he never seemed content to go in there and stay in there.

[ Michael Murphy can now retire from Donegal without a question hanging over himOpens in new window ]

It’s easy to wonder what he’d have scored playing at the edge of the square, but it’s not as easy to quantify all the other less glamorous stuff he did around the field, the stuff we might not notice all the time but which ensured he was so beloved by his team-mates.

I once read a brilliant description of what made the Real Madrid midfielder Alfredo Di Stéfano the greatest footballer of all time. In that all-conquering Madrid team, he was the second-best passer, the second-best goalscorer, the second-best tackler, the second-best header … and that’s what made him the best. The same could easily have been said of Murphy, perhaps while dispensing with the fallacy that there was someone better than him at any of those things. He was their leader in every category, and he was what Donegal needed him to be, always.

But that’s not to say that he could not have spent a bit more time playing the position his jersey number suggested, cycling in and out of there – like the other big recent GAA retirement.

TJ Reid wore a variety of numbers, like the man he succeeded as the leader of the Kilkenny attack, and played all across the forward line. But whenever Kilkenny really wanted to make a statement under Brian Cody, whenever they were intent on going for the jugular in the first 10 minutes of a game (and let’s face it, that was pretty often), Reid or Henry Shefflin would be stationed at full forward. It became a byword for Kilkenny’s ruthlessness. If they wanted a first-round knockout, they’d get ample opportunity to deliver the blow.

But remorseless excellence in that position alone never interested them. No more than Murphy with Donegal, Reid was never going to stay inside and let others do the work. They were the most skilful, most accurate players on their county team for well over a decade, and yet when the time came for a kickout or a puckout to be won, in a moment of real need, their teams never had to look anywhere else.

[ Dublin’s Ger Brennan: ‘A lot of political dark arts went on behind the scenes, I was collateral damage’Opens in new window ]

That Di Stefano line could just as easily apply to Reid too. And it is what distinguishes Murphy and Reid from other inside players that are loved and respected. David Clifford and Patrick Horgan are killers. Their job on the team is to score. It should not count against them that they’re not the second-best passer on their team, or the second-best tackler, of course. But the hardest thing to do in the game is to score, and focusing all your energy on that is not exactly a waste of time. It’s easier to train a fellah to move a piano, than it is to train him to play it.

When Murphy came out of retirement, it was presumed he would station himself close to goal. We even speculated that he had drawn up the 3-up rule specifically forbidding himself from going over the halfway line. But while his work on the FRC saved the energy of many of his compatriots wearing the number 14 jersey, it was never going to constrain him.

That 3-up rule in Gaelic football implicitly acknowledged that for all the good example set by Reid and Murphy and Shefflin, there is still a sneaking cultural regard hereabout for the hatcher, the goal-hanger. We all sat through Conor McManus’s career wondering if the fellah could just have been a little lazier, how many more points would he have kicked. Plenty of other players in that position did it, but only under duress. But for Michael Murphy and TJ Reid, being on the end of things, rather than stuck in the middle, was never enough.