Ciarán Murphy: Let’s not lose faith now in the need to reboot our game

We should be glad about Michael Murphy’s return to the Donegal intercounty scene, because without it we wouldn’t have heard about the Football Review Committee at all for the last couple of weeks.
A friend put it to me that Murphy was either convinced to return by Jim McGuinness, who saw the great man’s form in the Donegal senior championship this year and simply wouldn’t take no for an answer . . . or the other option, which was that Murphy was in fact engaged in the longest long-con in the history of the GAA.
The ‘con’ in question being – retire, install yourself as one of the most respected, even-handed, insightful analysts in the game, inevitably make your way on to a football review committee tasked with saving the game, and then carefully construct a series of rules that would reward your exceptional point-scoring from distance, while also precluding you from chasing back younger, sprightlier defenders.
Fearless punter Barney Curley couldn’t even dream of this level of chicanery. It seems too outlandish to be true, but that is what truly Machiavellian characters depend upon . . . our incredulity. Just because I’m paranoid doesn’t mean Michael Murphy isn’t out to get me.
His return aside, the FRC have gone quiet, like a nuclear submarine – no doubt engaged in frantic canvassing of those who need to be canvassed.
I was wondering what exactly it would take for the first rumblings of discontent to emerge about the sheer scale of change that they’re proposing to formulate. It turns out all it took was a very good game on television on Saturday evening between Naas and Cuala, and a decent game between Corofin and Pádraig Pearses to follow on Sunday afternoon. I have been approached by a couple of people since who pointed to these two games as an example of why the game doesn’t need wholesale changes.
One dabbles in plenty of things in life, be they Marvel movies, the entire John Grisham back catalogue sitting waiting for you in a country Airbnb, Heidegger and Kant and the way they might look at you. All of these things might be passing fads, but I would hesitate to say that I have lived and breathed their every nuance.
I have watched football. I have played football. I have despaired for football. This is the most scientific, high-powered committee ever assembled by the GAA. The problems are serious. Let’s not lose faith now, just because Naas thought kicking the ball into Darragh Kirwan, their best player, was an avenue worth exploring. And if you liked what you saw from Paul Carey on Sunday, then give him more of a chance to do it for the rest of his career.
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It will not have escaped the notice of regular readers of this column that Galway’s three-in-a-row hero Noel Tierney died last Sunday night, seven days after an event in our village of Milltown which I was privileged to attend.
When I wrote last week’s column there was no explicit way of wrestling with the idea which sat, not necessarily uncomfortably, and not entirely out of view of everyone there, that we were talking about the greatness of our village’s favourite son now, because we knew that he wouldn’t always be around. The clock is ticking for all of us, but the organisers were acutely aware that they did not know the day or the hour that they would hear of Noel’s passing.
[ Milltown and Galway turn out in force to honour Noel TierneyOpens in new window ]
His health battles had been ongoing, and there had been many days over the last few years where an event like last Sunday week just would not have been possible. So for the event to have passed off as well as it did, and for Noel and his family to have truly been able to bask in the acclaim of hundreds of people, felt like a miracle of timing.
And that was before the news broke, just seven days later, of his death. And now we are left as a community with a great sense of sadness, but with a realisation too that if we had waited even a week, Noel would not have been made abundantly aware of the hero-worship that we felt for him. There’s no other way to put it – that is a consolation. So it should be.
Funnily enough, I had never spoken to the man before last Sunday week, and I’m just utterly grateful to have had the opportunity to share a few words with him. Many, many others will have felt the same way this week.
Paul Conroy had agreed to be in Limerick last Sunday evening for a prior engagement, but travelled 50-odd kilometres in the opposite direction to Milltown, before heading back down the road and on to his original destination. He did that out of respect for a fellow Footballer of the Year, and I hope this week he understands the enormity of what he did.
I know plenty of Irishmen, of all ages, who would not be comfortable telling a friend they loved them, but when his old Galway team-mate Bosco McDermott stood up to pay tribute to Noel last Sunday week, I couldn’t escape the feeling that Bosco had stood in enough churches and funeral parlours wishing he’d just said the words. That was what I heard, at any rate. Those words were heard, and appreciated, and echoed – last week, this week, and into the future, for as long as football is played in Milltown.