Like Kerry, Paul Murphy finding his feet on the dry, fast going as summer heat rises

The All-Ireland champions deviated from the script after defeat to Donegal a month ago - they put away for footballs for a few sessions, defender Paul Murphy says

MOTORING: Kerry's Paul Murphy flies up the open terrace side of Fitzgerald Stadium with Armagh's Gareth Murphy in hot pursuit during Saturday's All-Ireland SFC Rd 3 clash. Pic: James Crombie, Inpho

It isn’t difficult to visualise training night conversations between a frustrated Paul Murphy and his sanguine Kerry manager Jack O’Connor.

A quarter of a century in senior inter-county management gifts the Dromid gaffer with a feel for these things. Takes off the cap, a rub of the forehead. An understanding wince. Steady, don’t push. Progress, bit by bit. Don’t lose the ceann.

“Jack has seen a lot before, and he would be preaching patience and keeping the head right, not doing anything too much to get it right, not overdoing it,” the Rathmore man reflected after the satisfaction of 60 championship minutes back in his legs on Saturday in Killarney. 

It’s a reliable indicator of O’Connor’s trust in Murphy that he was prepared to put him back in against a side like Armagh with next to nought done since getting injured against the same opposition in March league fare.

“I suppose you never know until you’re out there,” Murphy mused. “I’ve been back training fully for four or five weeks now. I tweaked a hammer, and it just sort of recurred a couple of times. It wasn’t a major one. It was just slow to heal.

“I had a nice block of training in but, if I’m honest, I was a small bit nervous going in from the start in a championship game. I got through it in one piece, now it’s about trying to get the body right for training on Tuesday or Wednesday night, and Tyrone on Saturday.

“Is it a challenge? A small bit, for sure. The main focus is trying to get the body right. You’re spending a lot of time up and down the side-line when you’d like to be in the main group. You probably miss out on a couple of tactical things that are going on, because your main focus is the rehab. We’ve had tough moments there in games when we were down a lot of bodies.” 

They were. But barring Tom O’Sullivan, Kerry have all their frontliners back on the bus for the road to Croke Park. And Dingle’s O’Sullivan may even be with them in the back seat. Good timing. “I’d like to tell you we had it all mapped out this way, but…” Jack O’Connor said after their tour de force at Fitzgerald Stadium.

There’s been upsides, of course, for the greater good. Murphy, at the advanced stage of his time in green and gold, sees that too.

“We’ve a lot of lads who’ve played plenty of minutes because of it (injuries) which they mightn’t have got otherwise. You can see them developing into really strong players – the likes of (Listowel’s) Eddie Healy, who was a stand-by player (against Armagh). I was talking to Paul Geaney during the week about him, and you can see Eddie growing and developing from getting bits of exposure, marking David (Clifford), and maybe Paul himself inside in training.

“If you take a step back from your own situation, you can see that other lads are developing because of it. That’s no bad thing – not to put pressure on Eddie or anything.” 

Murphy was speaking ahead of confirmation that the All-Ireland champions will face their old adversaries on Saturday evening, their third championship exam in any many weeks.

“Overall, it’s a good format, certainly compared to the last couple of years where there were more pros and cons - for the fan watching it at home, this is way better. Next week will be a challenge for us going three weeks in a row.

“It’s not for me to say it, but the home and away in the third round, I’m not sure - I was just praying last Monday morning that we would be at home. Whoever was going to come out of the hat, it was going to be a tough game regardless, but being at home is huge. Should it have been neutral? I don’t know.” 

Murphy’s brief return in Newbridge against Kildare was probably made possible by the three-week break after the damaging home defeat to Donegal. Jack O’Connor labelled the three week gap “huge” for their reset, and Murphy revealed something unusual for Kerry given the time of the year – they went through a mini-bloc of physical testing.

“There was a session or two where there was no football, which would be unusual, to be fair, for summer. You had that small bit of an opportunity to go after it for the first two weeks, and we did. Once you got your draw, it was a bit more tailored football-wise for the last week or ten days,” he explained.

“There were two or three tough sessions, but there’s a balance there as well. You can’t absolutely flog us to death, because we’re coming off a situation where we had a lot of injuries, and we don’t want to pick anymore up. We seem to have got that balance well enough in that period.

“We hardly trained at all between Meath and Armagh last year, so it’s been slightly different that way. Again, it’s about going back to not panicking, trusting the panel of players we have, and trusting the people that we have on the side-line, and the medical team, to get us right for the Kildare game that followed the Donegal game. It was different in that we got a three-week block where we could get a bit of work done.” 

Now the All-Ireland favourites have a real sense of where they are. And it’s a good place. Armagh sorted, dry, fast pitches and Croke Park on the horizon. The Kingdom smell the end game.

“You would know it,” Murphy says. “The pace seems to have gone up a bit. The weather is better. The football is sticking that bit better. It’s a bit sharper. You can kind of sense it alright.” 

How did jogging into the half time dressing room feel on Saturday, after Geaney’s gift goal.

“There was elation for two or three seconds there. As you’re running in, you see there was five seconds left as it hit the net. As Jack would say, let out a few yahoos but once we got back inside, it was about settling it down again.

“But it was a key score. It put a different complexion on everything. If you go in three points up facing into an Armagh with the wind, it’s different to six. You can manage the game that bit better. If it’s three, they come down, kick a goal or a two-pointer, and that’s your plan out of the way. We were calm, but it was a key score. There’s no doubt about it.”