MICHAEL MOYNIHAN: Farewell John, your close personal friends will miss you
A few years ago an interview with a GAA manager in the town didn’t go too well. I was distracted; a fault with the car was in my train of thought as I rolled out the questions.
After our chat, I told the manager my problem, and though he wasn’t able to remedy the fault with the engine, he had the perfect solution? “Why don’t you just ring Johnny?”
Within five minutes of dialling John A Murphy’s phone the full sweep of Dungarvan’s facilities were at my disposal.
A qualified mechanic was resuscitating the car, while I was ensconced chez Murphy, enjoying some soup Eileen had made; I feebly pretended to fend off a follow-up cup of tea and heaped plate of biscuits as Johnny rooted around in his office, turning on his computer in case I was under pressure to file copy.
Johnny died on Tuesday evening, which will make the long roll downhill into Dungarvan a little lonelier for me, and for many others who counted themselves as close personal friends of his.
You had to know him to understand the application of the phrase: if you rang Johnny for the phone number of a player or manager not only were the home, work and mobile numbers immediately produced, as well as the man’s nickname, his wife’s maiden name and the postal address of the house, Johnny invariably described the person you wanted to talk to as ‘a close personal friend’.
It was no paradox. You couldn’t meet the man without becoming a close personal friend of his. If you rang GAA people in Waterford Johnny’s name alone was sufficient to set the doors swinging open.
Johnny was a shining light. Nothing happened in his bailiwick that he was unaware of.
I lost count of the number of times I’d ring him about something that I heard might be happening in Waterford GAA and hear the unmistakable fluting tones on the other end of the line: “Rest easy, I spoke to the man in question just an hour ago...” He broke plenty of stories — nobody is ever likely to forget his Dungarvan Aids story in 1995, for instance.
The proverbial world exclusive every journalist dreams of, he broke the story by borrowing a pen from Eileen during a sermon at mass to take down notes, and it took off from there like a rocket.
He must also have been the only man in Ireland to report on himself, when he was both chairman of the Waterford County Board and the reporter assigned to cover those meetings.
That was typical of Johnny: in the GAA press boxes where we met he could wear any number of hats. Reporting on Waterford games he declared himself a Dungarvan GAA club man, while reporting on Cork games he outed himself as an employee of a Cork-based newspaper; if Waterford were playing Cork, however, he always came clean as a Tipperary native, first and foremost.
Those press boxes will be quieter for his absence. My sympathies go to Eileen and his daughters, as do those of every GAA writer who sat next to Johnny over the years.
On many occasions while driving through Dungarvan on the way to Waterford we passed his unmistakable figure heading out against us along the coast road for a walk — striding out, indomitable. We always beeped the horn and he always saluted, and at the next game in Thurles or Fraher Field he’d start off.
“You’re always coming through Dungarvan, would you not stop with those children and come in for a cup of tea? It’d do them no harm at all to get away from that Cork accent they have to listen to up there the whole time.”
I’m sorry now I didn’t, John. Rest easy.
Your close personal friends — all of us — will miss you.
