{"id":411378,"date":"2026-04-22T07:42:09","date_gmt":"2026-04-22T07:42:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/411378\/"},"modified":"2026-04-22T07:42:09","modified_gmt":"2026-04-22T07:42:09","slug":"kerry-should-have-dealt-with-michael-murphy-the-moment-he-punched-dylan-casey-the-irish-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/411378\/","title":{"rendered":"Kerry should have dealt with Michael Murphy the moment he punched Dylan Casey \u2013 The Irish Times"},"content":{"rendered":"

A couple of years ago, I was in company with Michael Murphy<\/a>. He was retired from playing and back in the real world at the time, a washed-up old footballer like the rest of us. We were out socially and in an environment like that, you\u2019d be mad not to ask him about Jim McGuinness<\/a>. What\u2019s the big secret? What makes him such a good manager?<\/p>\n

I\u2019m not telling tales out of school here because what Murphy said was fairly basic and simple. The secret is there\u2019s no big secret. Just work and repetition. Meaning that if McGuinness is drilling the Donegal<\/a> lads on some new tactic or set-up, they\u2019ll go out on the training pitch and work on it for an hour. And if it isn\u2019t right after an hour, they\u2019ll stay for another hour. And if it still isn\u2019t right after that, they\u2019ll stay until it is.<\/p>\n

You only need to look at them in action and you can see how well drilled they are. Think about where they were when he took over. Relegated to Division Two. Knocked out of Ulster by Down, who were a Tailteann Cup team at the time. They were going nowhere fast.<\/p>\n

He has built them back up, step by step. In his first year, Donegal won Division Two, won Ulster and reached an All-Ireland semi-final. In year two, they stayed in Division One, won Ulster again and got to an All-Ireland final. Now, in year three, they\u2019ve won the league outright and you can be damn sure they\u2019re aiming to make it three in a row in Ulster. It\u2019s all a natural progression.<\/p>\n

Last year\u2019s All-Ireland final was a disaster, so of course he had to get them back to Croke Park this year to wash it out of their hair. The league final<\/a> won\u2019t bear any resemblance to what will happen if they meet Kerry<\/a> again late in the championship but that wasn\u2019t the point. Croke Park plays differently to every other pitch in the country. You can\u2019t be going there with negative connotations in your head.<\/p>\n

\"Donegal'sDonegal’s Michael Murphy and manager Jim McGuinness shake hands after last month’s National Football League Division 1 final victory against Kerry at Croke Park. Photograph: Tom Maher\/Inpho <\/p>\n

There\u2019s no downside to hammering Kerry. For what it\u2019s worth, I don\u2019t think there\u2019s any massive downside to the result for Kerry either. I agree with Jack O\u2019Connor<\/a> \u2013 the Armagh game the previous week was a seriously intense workout, especially for a league game. It took its toll on Kerry, meaning they were flat against Donegal and got what was coming to them. It happens to everyone.<\/p>\n

If I was in the Kerry dressingroom, I\u2019d have taken only one thing out of the final \u2013 and it\u2019s nothing to do with the result. I\u2019m talking about Murphy and the punch on Dylan Casey. If I was one of Casey\u2019s teammates, I wouldn\u2019t want to hear a word about David Gough or Conor Lane or disciplinary committees or anything like that. I\u2019d be looking in the mirror.<\/p>\n

Murphy should have been dealt with there and then, on the pitch. Great fella, brilliant footballer, whatever. A box in the jaw is a box in the jaw and you can\u2019t be a team who lets that slide. Murphy needed to be reminded of that and if it meant a Kerry player taking a card, so be it. <\/p>\n

But nobody said boo to him, never mind gave him a clipping. That would have been my big takeaway from the day. Apart from anything else, Murphy himself would understand the terms and conditions there. <\/p>\n

I have Donegal as slight second favourites for the All-Ireland behind Kerry. They\u2019re a small cut above Armagh, purely because they probably have a deeper bench. But to me, those three are a cut above everybody else. All three have a very solid system that their players know inside out. And all three have serious long-range kickers that will make all the difference if games come down to two-pointers.<\/p>\n

\"Donegal'sDonegal’s Daire \u00d3 Baoill is one of the team’s best distance kickers. Photograph: Bryan Keane\/Inpho <\/p>\n

Donegal are well stacked in that area, no question. Murphy can kick them if he has to, Ois\u00edn Gallen can catch fire, Michael Langan and Jason McGee are both very dependable from that distance. Add in the goalkeeper (whichever one McGuinness goes with) and Daire \u00d3 Baoill when he gets back from injury, and you have your pick of distance kickers. That\u2019s going to be very hard to counteract for any team coming up against them.<\/p>\n

In the middle of it all, Murphy is the key man. There are very few managers in the country lucky enough to have an extension of themselves on the pitch. This doesn\u2019t matter so much in these early rounds, when the games are being played in front of small enough crowds and the players can hear you when they choose to.<\/p>\n

But when it gets to Croke Park and the place is rocking, there\u2019s just no way to get messages on to the pitch. Having someone like Murphy there, who takes it upon himself to organise everyone into shape, who has a feel for what a game needs at a given moment \u2013 that\u2019s priceless.<\/p>\n

Even just look at his goal in the league final, when he intercepted a loose pass and went bearing down on Shane Murphy. In another game, on another day, he could easily have dished that ball off and given somebody else their goal. But he knew that a goal from him, especially after he should have been sent off, would be a real nail in the coffin for Kerry.<\/p>\n

I would imagine he won\u2019t last the whole game against Down this weekend. Donegal will use him sparingly in games like this \u2013 his biggest battles are down the line. Funnily enough, I\u2019d say a bit of a suspension for the Casey punch would have done him no harm. It might happen later for a lesser offence. These things have a way of making you pay at the most inopportune time.<\/p>\n

You can only admire him and McGuinness and Donegal. There was no talk of either of them walking over the winter \u2013 and why would there be? I know he\u2019s nearly 37 but he was still in the running for Footballer of the Year last year. <\/p>\n

He and Jim have one more job to do. They\u2019ll want to stay until they do it right.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A couple of years ago, I was in company with Michael Murphy. He was retired from playing and…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":411379,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[6937,6342,61,60,180648,13018,13019,112],"class_list":{"0":"post-411378","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-sports","8":"tag-kerry-gaa","9":"tag-donegal-gaa","10":"tag-ie","11":"tag-ireland","12":"tag-jack-o-connor","13":"tag-jim-mcguinness","14":"tag-michael-murphy","15":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/411378","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=411378"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/411378\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/411379"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=411378"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=411378"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=411378"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}