CLONES is an eerie place after a big match.
At three o’clock the ground is brimming with life and nervous excitement. No way would we be anywhere else. We roar and cheer as the players run and score and battle and we celebrate victory, or curse our rotten luck.
By five o’clock it’s just an empty old stadium in a small country town. The fresh divots on the pitch, forgotten programmes in the deserted stands and discarded water bottles in the dugouts are the only evidence there was ever a game there at all.
Last Sunday the caaaaw, caaaaw-ing of crows high in the trees around the ground broke the silence as dusk fell and a couple of young lads kicked their ball on the pitch where Ballybay and Kilcoo had met in an Ulster club quarter-final.
Paul Finlay scored two points for the Monaghan champions. Finlay has so many memories of Clones for club and county – he won the Ulster title there with Monaghan, he captained his club to the county crown…
Sunday may have been the last hurrah for him and supporters of both clubs gave him a deserved standing ovation when he was taken off with a couple of minutes to go.
After almost everyone else had gone home, Finlay walked back out into the ground to savour the moment and have a couple of snaps taken in the tunnel. If he has retired – and he says it’s more than likely – then he leaves with a place in his county’s folklore assured.
But very few GAA players ever really make a definitive decision to retire. Did you? It kind of just happens. You have your time, great years if you’re lucky, and then you read the runes and if a delegation from the club doesn’t arrive at your door at the start of the next season to plead with you to get the boots on again, well, it seems you’re finished.
Finlay might be back next year. It’s safe to assume that he’ll see how he feels before he makes any call, so don’t throw the Puma Kings out yet Mrs Finlay and don’t be surprised if you see him running the roads or at the gym between the end of this season and the start of the next.
The lure of one last hurrah is so difficult to turn down.
Look at James Lavery. The Maghery stalwart was done and dusted and after 20 years of football it seemed he’d decided it was time to move on and that there was more to life than chasing a ball round a field. He shrugged off requests to return to the fold until the pestering and the temptation finally proved too much and he pulled the jersey on again for the championship clash with Crossmaglen.
It didn’t work out for him. Cross were too good on the night and the game was over before he came on. But on another night: Maghery are two points down in the final minute, a high ball into the square, Lavery jumps, gets a hand to it… The crowd roars!
We never lose the love for playing the game.
Then again, it’s important to know when to quit and I think Michael Murphy has got it right. Glenswilly’s greatest announced his retirement from county football on Wednesday. What a player he was for Donegal. Has any individual ever had such an impact on their county?
Brian McIver gave him his senior debut for Donegal at 17 and recalled how he set new standards almost from his first training session.
“In came a 17-year-old cub with a totally different attitude of how football should be played and approached called Michael Murphy and the rest is history,” Brian told me earlier this year.
“I would say Michael Murphy coming in changed Donegal football because his attitude was so good, it was absolutely brilliant. He had no fear of anybody, he had no fear of taking on anything…”
For 15 years Murphy was an absolute behemoth for Donegal and, as Brian said, he set the standards for his county. Even last season, when age and injuries and miles on-the-clock were catching up on him and he was being double-marked by Father Time and Aidan Forker and Donegal weren’t firing at all, it seemed that it was only when Murphy was on the ball that his under-performing team-mates started to play.
He captained his county to the All-Ireland in 2012 and it’s really a shame that he doesn’t have more than one Celtic Cross to show for his efforts because he deserved more.
If his Mayo-born father hadn’t relocated to Donegal surely the unfortunate westerners, with Michael Murphy in their ranks, would have won a few of those All-Ireland titles that slipped away. Such is life.
What was his best moment? Hard to say but that goal in the All-Ireland final against Mayo is up there.
The catch, the strength and athleticism to hold off his marker with one arm and carry the ball in the other and then the shot… A ball has never been hit harder and it nearly took the net into Hill 16.
But time waits for no man, not even Michael Murphy.
Against Armagh in the Ulster Championship last season, he rolled back the years as he sprinted down the field at Ballybofey but another Ulster title slipped away and Donegal looked a spent force when Armagh avenged that defeat in the Qualifiers.
A new manager has come in and Murphy has chosen the right time to bow out and he does so as a player who would challenge for a place in any of the great teams in history.
As Michael Murphy exited the GAA stage at county level, Cristiano Ronaldo remains determined to hog it. For the best part of two decades Ronaldo has been vying with Lionel Messi as the best player on the planet and he has scored tons and tons of goals for his clubs and with Portugal, for whom he has been an inspirational figure in the Murphy mould.
A great career has begun to slow down and, while he still offers goals which used to be what the game was all about, he has slipped down the pecking order at Man United. Given the career he has had, he deserved a better ending than his interview with Piers Morgan in which he slags off everyone at United from manager Eric Ten Haag to the chef in the canteen.
He might well have valid points to raise but their root cause is an age-old issue: He’s not in the team.
I didn’t enjoy watching one of the all-time greats being dragged into the mire and we’ve all got better things to do than listen to a multi-millionaire crying about not getting a game.
After the career he has had, he could learn something from an amateur player like Michael Murphy.
He could learn about knowing when it’s time to go and how to bow out gracefully because, when the final whistle blows and the eerie silence descends, all he’s left with is memories.
Well, memories and a nice wee stash in the bank…
