It has been a long year already for Paul Murphy in one respect. Taking in his club Rathmore’s run to an All-Ireland Intermediate Club title where they defeated Galbally of Tyrone on January 15, he has been going full tilt since returning from the Kerry team holiday and his delayed honeymoon in late December.
Regaining his place on the Kerry team was the prime focus in lining out in Ballybofey for their first game in the League two weeks after being in Croke Park.
“I was keen to try and get back in and stake a claim, and get a starting jersey in the League and maybe, and try and nail down a starting position," he said.
"For the most part, it was fine. Towards the end of the League alright I felt a bit tired, found it a little bit of a slog. That’s because we weren’t playing particularly well. We’d four away trips, that’s a lot of mileage covered in the League, which contributes to that as well."
Injuries to others may have helped him re-establish himself in the starting line-up but avoiding injuries himself, like he suffered in 2022, has been very beneficial in getting back into Kerry’s half-back line.
“A muscle injury, a grade two muscle injury is four to six weeks or something like that. Before you might miss one Championship game. The way it is at the moment, you could miss three or four really important (games).
"There’s a bit of luck with it the way it is at the moment and having a clear run injury free was always important, it is maybe more important even again now, but if you stay injury free, I think the current structure of a game every two weeks, for a player is a very nice structure,” he said of the format for the year now.
On Kerry’s difficulties against Derry in the semi-final, Murphy said a belief that Derry could not match their high-scoring first-half return kept Kerry somewhat calm at half-time.
“1-11 at half-time, that’s a lot to be conceding in a half of football, so we wouldn’t have been happy with that. I suppose we might have been happy with the fact there was only three in it, which to be fair, Derry had played most of the football and done most of the running in that first half, so we hung in there. We didn’t change anything dramatically tactically, we probably just upped the intensity in the second half,” he said.
“The second half then we’d be happy with what we conceded. I’d be a bit of a man for law of averages. A lot of their shots, they were great scores in the first half, and they were going over.
"I thought it was a bit like Galway in the All-Ireland final last year. I just felt in the Galway game last year their scoring efficiency can’t keep up, it’ll have to drop and, fortunately for us, Derry’s dropped a little bit. They were getting chances, but maybe they were under more pressure and they didn't take it,” he said.
- Derry devastation as Kerry come back to reach All-Ireland final against Dublin
Back in the 2019 drawn decider with the Dubs, Murphy forced a save from Stephen Cluxton prior to Killian Spillane becoming the last player to score a Championship goal against the returning Dublin goalkeeper.
“He got a tiny touch, I don’t think it was immediately clear for people watching in the stand or watching at home. It was a good save. I was kind of between whether I should have tapped it over. We scored a point from the ‘45’ that followed so that was the same result,” he said of four years ago.
“I was kind of between taking a solo and shooting. I was just on the edge of four steps so I was probably kicking from further out than I would have liked. I just kind of blazed it really without simplifying it too much.”
