Tommy Walsh will add professional insight in Kerry, says Murphy
Walsh recently called time on a five-year AFL career with St Kilda and, latterly, the Sydney Swans, to pick up where he left off in 2009 with Kerry. He won an All-Ireland with the Kingdom that year while he had been the Young Footballer of the Year in 2008.
Walsh’s comeback begins with the county’s McGrath Cup campaign and the All-Ireland champions will also be able to call on Colm Cooper after his 2014 season was destroyed by injury.
Even with Declan O’Sullivan’s retirement, it makes for a very different landscape to 12 months ago, when the departure of a number of senior players led many to believe Kerry would not be a September contender.
“It has to be a help,” said Murphy of Walsh’s return. “Colm was involved with us this year, not in a playing capacity, but he was involved in the training, and he has a great head for the game. He gives great advice and having him around was a huge help. What he adds to it next year will be mainly in a playing capacity, whereas you could imagine Tommy could add a lot more than just that. He was a great prospect and player when he left so five years as a professional, you would imagine, would bring him on again.
“Having been involved with two professional teams, he will have picked up things that we can take off him and hopefully that will bring on other players as well, not just through his football ability, but his knowledge of recovery and things like that.”
It makes for exciting times in a county still warming itself from the unexpected glow of that triumph three months ago and the permutations Eamonn Fitzmaurice will have in front of goal are almost endless.
That in itself can foster problems in a team environment if game time and egos don’t chime, but Murphy believes the Kingdom manager has displayed a capacity to align personal ambitions with the collective well-being.
“Marc Ó Sé mentioned it this year when he didn’t start the Mayo [All-Ireland semi-final] replay, that Eamonn talked him through it and that he could have no arguments. Eamonn will do whatever he thinks is right for Kerry. That’s the way to have it. There will be good competition there next year, but that is only good for Kerry. If individuals have to lose out that’s football and you have to get over it and row in with the rest of the panel.”
Murphy’s arrival onto the panel this time last year wasn’t exactly heralded in the manner Cooper and Walsh’s reappearances will be, but the defender from Rathmore left his mark on the season by the time it had ended. Injury to Killian Young opened the door in defence, a league debut against Dublin in Croke Park followed and he finished up the campaign with a man of the-match performance against Donegal in the final and an All-Star.
Not bad for a man who targeted a few league games and a place in the championship squad when the new year dawned and even the disappointment of crying off the All-Star tour to Boston was caused by Rathmore’s East Kerry final replay defeat of Legion.
“Once the replay was set, there was never any discussion,” said the Killarney-based trainee accountant. “It was a pity the way it worked out that it couldn’t be changed, but you have to have a bit of perspective too. My mother said to me, ‘If I said this time last year to you that you would have won an All-Ireland and an All-Star but you would have to miss the All-Star trip’, sure I’d have bitten her hand off for it.
“It was a pity, but it isn’t the end of the world and we won the final. It’s the East Kerry Championship and it’s very hard to win that medal. Diarmuid O’Keeffe is from our own club. He has two All-Ireland medals, but he has no East Kerry championship. It’s a really competitive division.”
A treasured medal. In a treasured year.
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