Shane Murphy: From Longtime understudy to 'vital cog' for Kerry

VITAL COG: Kerry's Shane Murphy has become very important for his side. Pic: ©INPHO/James Crombie/

In his Irish Examiner column on Monday, Anthony Daly perfectly articulated the consensus view emerging from the key moment in the Clare-Limerick hurling semi-final a day earlier. In doing so, he also perfectly captured the importance of Nickie Quaid to the green set-up.

Fifty-four minutes in, Quaid brought down Peter Duggan. But instead of being shown black, Quaid escaped with yellow. He escaped sin-bin residency until the 64th minute. The agreement was that Limerick wouldn’t have escaped from a position of six down without him on the field.

“Tony Kelly did bury the penalty but being without Quaid – their quarter-back – for ten minutes would surely have been too much of a cross for Limerick to carry down the home stretch,” wrote Dalo.

Quaid is to Limerick what Shane Ryan is to Kerry. He is their respective quarter-back. He is the reigning All-Star goalkeeper. His ability to get restarts away off either foot makes him so hard to read and press. At times last year, he made hurling’s fast puckouts look like glacial clearances.

Kerry haven’t had to do without Ryan for 10 minutes this year. They’ve had to do without him for all 16 hours and 20 minutes they’ve spent inside the whitewash in 2026.

They’ve thus far succeeded in carrying that cross. Shane Murphy has made sure of that.

If, as expected, Murphy continues between the sticks for Sunday’s All-Ireland semi-final, it will be his seventh championship appearance of 2026, surpassing the six he had made across his previous seven seasons in the set-up.

The contrast in his two most recent visits to Croke Park point to significantly improved confidence off the tee, improved variety off the tee, and improved cuteness of those he is aiming at.

Murphy’s League final numbers against Donegal were a disaster. Donegal’s packed and pacy front-line press cut out the chipped option into the No.2 and 4 pockets. The Kerry goalkeeper was forced long. Seven of his first 11 restarts were lost. In total, Donegal mined 0-10 from their 41% win rate on the opposition kick-out.

Fast forward to June 27 and the All-Ireland quarter-final against Tyrone. Murphy successfully lasered long his first four restarts in the direction of Joe O’Connor, Dylan Casey, Mark O’Shea, and Seán O’Brien. Gone were the League final floaters. Gone was the one-dimensional nature of his kickout.

Six were chipped short. All six were retained. A score came off four of them. A remarkable 2-20 was sourced from Murphy’s kickout and Kerry’s 84% retention of such.

Tyrone’s Ronan Cassidy has his shot saved by goalkeeper Shane Murphy. Pic: ©INPHO/James Crombie.

Those out the field obviously have to be credited in those numbers. Murphy’s penchant is to go long and right in the direction of O’Shea and O’Connor. That is where he sent exactly half his quarter-final kick-outs. That is where he sent his third restart of the second-half.

O’Shea, without leaving the turf, blocked two Tyrone players, enabling Seán O’Brien to fetch uncontested. The play finished with a green and gold two-pointer.

Disrupting Murphy and dislodging the influence of O’Shea at kick-out time will be paramount to Dublin’s approach. It’s an area of green and gold strength they’ll go confidently after given their complete deconstruction of Galway’s predictable restart last time out, not to mind their negating of the maroon’s middle-third mountains in the process.

You could argue the Dubs have already started going after it, what with Ger Brennan repeatedly namechecking Murphy at his county's media event on Monday.

“I would put Ó Cofaigh Byrne on [Mark O’Shea] solely because if Kerry get possession [from their kick-out], with their efficiency, with their return, and with their skillset, they’ll score, so you need to prevent them getting as much possession as possible,” said James Horan on this week's Irish Examiner Gaelic football show.

“Certainly, with what Mark O’Shea has been doing, you take that away, then all of a sudden they have to go to Plan B. What’s that, who’s that?

“As Dublin are attacking, the Ó Cofaigh Byrnes and others should be [thinking], how can they support the attack, but also, how can they support the next phase in play as regards the press, so depending on how the attack plays out, they are already getting set up.”

Last word to the Kerry manager. There was acknowledgement of Murphy’s League final difficulties and reference to training ground surgery thereafter to turn the long-time No.1 understudy into a “vital cog” in Kerry’s Sam defence.

“He had big boots to fill this year. The other big factor was he'd never got a proper run in the team. It takes a bit of time to grow into the role and to feel at home in the role,” said Jack this week.

“We obviously didn't have a good day in the league final, and that wasn't just down to Shane. That was down to a lot of factors, and we did a lot of work on trying to sort out our kick-out after that. That work is paying dividends.

“The great thing the last day about Shane and our fellas was we had a lot of variety in our kick-outs. We went short, medium, and long. We had quick ones, we had slow ones, so if you were looking at our kick-out, you would say they have more than one tool in the locker.

“Having said that, the Dublin kick-out press is probably the most impressive in the country.”