Paul Murphy hopes to end glittering season with more silverware
Paul Murphy of Rathmore, Kerry, pictured ahead of the AIB GAA All-Ireland Football Intermediate Club Championship Final, which takes place this Sunday, January 15th at Croke Park at 3.30pm. The AIB GAA All-Ireland Club Championships features some of #TheToughest players from communities all across Ireland. It is these very communities that the players represent that make the AIB GAA All-Ireland Club Championships unique. Now in its 32nd year supporting the GAA Club Championships, AIB is extremely proud to once again celebrate the communities that play such a role in sustaining our national games.
By John Harrington
Paul Murphy is having a season of seasons.
He won the clean sweep of Allianz National League, Munster championship, and All-Ireland senior championship with Kerry, a Kerry Senior Championship title with East Kerry, and both the Kerry and Munster Intermediate Football Championships with his club Rathmore.
On Sunday he’ll have the opportunity to finish a season of silverware on another high when Rathmore play Galbally Pearses in the AIB All-Ireland Club Intermediate Football Final. Not a bad innings all things considered.
“Yeah, you would have taken it if you were offered!” he says. “It's funny, in 2021 I had a diary and they were the three targets (All-Ireland with Kerry and club championships with East Kerry and Rathmore) that I put at the front of the diary in 2021.
"I'd read something about goal-setting, that you explicitly put it on the diary, and it's on the front page, you'd see it every time.
“But sure the three boxes were left unticked. So when 2022 came around, I said I wasn't going to bother with that. It hadn't worked out in 2021. But the way the year went last year, you couldn't have asked for better.
“Every team I was involved with were successful. So it's pinch-yourself stuff. I'm really fortunate to be involved with such good panels and with such good management teams behind them.”
The only piece of silverware Murphy didn’t win on the field of play was the AIB Munster Club Intermediate football title.
Paul Murphy lifts the Sam Maguire Cup after Kerry's victory over Galway in the 2022 All-Ireland SFC Final.
A honeymoon he’d delayed by a year that took him to New Zealand for four weeks meant he missed the win over Limerick champions Na Piarsaigh, but he still found a way to watch it.
“Yeah, I got to watch it. It was being streamed online. It was 4:30am it started at over in New Zealand. We had it on the laptop. We were travelling around by campervan. We had it on the laptop in the back of the campervan.
“Rathmore were up a few points and got a goal halfway through the second-half. After that then, I fully relaxed and enjoyed the last 15 minutes or so.
“I was confident that we wouldn't be caught. It was a different sort of experience, being so far away, feeling so helpless for a game. It's not an experience I'd like to have many more times!”
He was back to anchor the Rathmore defence for their comfortable All-Ireland semi-final win over Wexford and Leinster champions, St. Mogue’s, Fethard.
Kerry team-mate, Shane Ryan, was the star of the show that day. An All-Star goalkeeper for Kerry this year, he turns poacher at club level and scored 1-3 from the corner-forward position in a man of the match performance.
“He's always played underage and at senior level out the field with Rathmore,” says Murphy. “You'd all know him as a goalkeeper and what a fantastic player he is there, but for us, as an inside forward, he's a fantastic ball winner, can kick off both legs too, so a big part of our attacking threat.
“His two brothers Cathal and Mark are our midfielders then and they'd be two big strong, athletic men, and they've been brilliant for us throughout this campaign. So the Ryans are well-represented on our team, they're key parts of what we're doing.”
Liam Rafferty of Galbally Pearses, Tyrone, left, and Paul Murphy of Rathmore, Kerry, pictured ahead of the AIB GAA All-Ireland Football Intermediate Club Championship Final, which takes place this Sunday, January 15th at Croke Park at 3.30pm.
Murphy knows that Rathmore will face a much tougher test in Sunday’s Final against Tyrone and Ulster champions, Galbally Pearses, who fired four goals past Dunmore McHales in their semi-final.
By the time the ball is thrown in on Sunday, he intends to have his homework fully done for what he expects to be a serious game of football.
“I watched their Ulster Final and I'm hoping to look at the stream of their semi-final later today and do a bit of research online, try to get hold of a few match reports and things like that. They were really impressive in their Ulster Final against Corduff. They're phsyically very fit, strong, and quick team.
“Very disciplined and tough in the tackle and they're racking up big scores. They're getting a lot of goals and they seem to have a big spread of scorers. They don't seem to be reliant on one or two forwards to do their scoring in every game. Different guys are stepping up and doing the damage in different games so that makes it very difficult to then try to plan for and sort out match-ups and things like that.
“I suppose what we've found a bit with this campaign is that we're probably unfamiliar with the players on the other teams we're coming up against. Once we've gotten out of Kerry where you'd have a fair knowledge of the players and teams we're facing from Munster on, I suppose a bigger focus starts to come on our own approach and having ourselves right to perform as well as we can without getting too hung up on the players we're coming up against. Just because we wouldn't have the same level of knowledge.
“Saying that, from what we've seen so far of Galbally, they appear to be a really, really serious outfit. So it's going to be a big challenge for us at the weekend."
