Tommy Martin: Michael Murphy didn't get his fairytale ending, but Messi did

TRUE GREAT: Michael Murphy hung up his boots for Donegal after many years toilng to win a second All-Ireland. Pic: Stephen McCarthy/Sportsfile

Not saying it was a JFK moment or anything but I will always remember where I was when I heard that Michael Murphy was retiring. More importantly, I will always remember what I felt: that is, a pang of sadness somewhere around the belly area followed by a sharp rush of guilt for being so silly.

There was, after all, a lot worse things going on in the world that November evening. War raged on in Ukraine, global recession loomed and the weather was shite. For God's sake, Donegal had known real tragedy just a month before on that terrible day in the village of Creeslough.

And wasn't Murphy 33 years old now, a good age for any messiah to call it quits? Greying around the temples and the great heroic body creaking lately at the weight of carrying the county on his back. He owed us nothing.

Sure, he had only won one All-Ireland, but that's one more than most of us. He also had one more Letterkenny sporting goods shop and one more university sports faculty to run than most of us. And wasn't he newly engaged, with all the looming domestic considerations that infers?

But I always had this narrative in my head about how it would end for Michael Murphy and Donegal. Age would eventually preclude him from trying to play every position on the pitch, writing the theme tune, singing the theme tune. He would return to his garret at full forward, there to wreak havoc with his wiles and wit and, lo, a new generation of younger players would help him back up the steps of the Hogan Stand. The circle would be complete and he would shuffle off to his eternal reward or as close as you can get to it in Letterkenny and its environs.

Then came that blindside blow on a wet November evening. Never glad confident morning again. This, I thought, must be how Gotham City will feel when Batman hangs up his utility belt. He won't be out there anymore, looking over us, toiling for us in the great struggle - it made the winter seem longer and darker and lonelier and that feeling in my belly was an emptiness because the little story I had made up would never have an ending.

A few days after Michael Murphy called it a day, Lionel Messi toddled centre stage in Qatar. He's a lot smaller than Murphy and carried a bigger load. Everyone knows what happened next though it is still scarcely believable.

Even outside of Argentina's batshit fans, most people were rooting for Messi, mainly out of the purist gratitude for all the nights spent in front of the telly shaking your head in wonder. This was not like Murphy, the county hero doing it for your local place, that personal, folk connection, and yet the feeling was deep and heartfelt.

When it became clear that Messi was in the mood and Argentina had a shout, it was pointed out that he had sullied his soul by signing a deal to promote tourism in Saudi Arabia, because who wouldn't want to catch a mass beheading on their jolliers? It was also mentioned that he had failed to do the right thing by the Spanish tax man to the tune of many millions. For some this was a major turn-off. Others mithered about separating the dancer from the dance.

Regular readers of this column will know that we frequently chunter on about the Saudis and the perils of dodgy despots in general. Messi was now on the payroll of the Qataris in his day job with Paris Saint-Germain and Saudi Arabia for his side hustle as a tourism ambassador. That made him a bad guy, right? And yet here I was cheering him on like he's Babe the pig in a sheepdog trial.

But the reaction Messi was provoking was entirely emotional. The story about him trying to do what Diego Maradona had done in 1986 had become this great over-arching theme above all the myriad dramas and exploits that a World Cup brings. It had become an epic of pure feeling.

Maradona's World Cup is the first one I remember and the one all since have been measured against and fallen short. It was like getting a glimpse of heaven and then chasing it around every corner for the rest of your life. And now it was happening again. Finally, after all the failures, Messi was doing it. He was the chosen one, after all.

I read something recently about how some Native American tribes believed time to be circular, rather than linear. No beginnings or endings, everything is just sort of always there, turning around in time. Maybe that's what Maradona and Messi are, just the bodily form of some perpetually restless spirit. It certainly makes me feel better about Murphy, lashing the ball into the Mayo net in the Hill 16 end for all eternity.

But if this year had a spirit then its physical form was female. When I was a kid watching Maradona in 1986, it would have been impossible to conceive that there would come a year when the great majority of defining sporting images would be of triumphant women.

I thought of Amber Barrett, of course, and the toe poke in Hampden Park that took Ireland to the World Cup. Of Chloe Kelly scoring the winner for England at the Euros and whipping off her top and celebrating in her sports bra because why wouldn't she?

Katie Taylor and Amanda Serrano lifting Madison Square Garden to its feet, the rise and rise of Leona Maguire and the unstoppable Rachael Blackmore and Amy Broadhurst and Kellie Harrington on top of the world and all the Ladies football stars storming Australia and it goes on and on.

The exhilarating rush of it all. I think of standing on the sidelines trying to coach my own daughter's soccer team and telling her that the goal she scored in training was just like Maradona. Who's Maradona? Well, let me tell you all about it...

The sense you get thinking of all that is not so much of stories with endings but of the great, unstoppable, profoundly optimistic power of change and how it makes anything possible, even things you cannot yet see. Which, when you are contemplating life without Michael Murphy, is very reassuring indeed.