Ruairi Murphy of Kerry poses for a portrait with the Sam Maguire Cup during the launch of the GAA Football All-Ireland Senior Championship National 2024 at Lough Beg in Derry. Photo by Brendan Moran/Sportsfile.
By John Harrington
It’s been both a physically and mentally challenging year for Kerry footballer Ruairí Murphy, but the Listry man is hopeful the adversity he’s had to overcome will make him stronger.
After a promising debut season in 2023 that saw him get game-time in both the League and championship, 2024 has been a much more frustrating campaign watching from the sidelines.
He suffered a serious hamstring injury doing a simple drill in Kerry training last December, and the diagnosis was that he could avoid surgery because the muscle was still holding on “by the tiniest of threads”.
But five weeks into his rehab he re-tore the hamstring while running and this time surgery was the only option.
“It was actually the middle of the hamstring that ripped,” says Murphy. “So you can imagine a piece of rope and cutting the rope in the middle so they could reattach it, so it took a bit longer to heal and I was in a brace for a bit longer than normal because they had to make sure the tendon attached properly.
“It was as bad as a hamstring injury could get but I’ve been passing all the strength and running tests now with flying colours, so I’m in a good position at the moment. It’s just about keep building on it and easing into it.”
He’s feeling positive now he’s out the other end of it, but there were some challenging times along the way.
“Yeah, the physical was tough maybe for the first couple of weeks in the brace,” says Murphy.
“You are laid up at home, and just moving around the house and on crutches. I hardly left the house for the first five or six weeks, bar maybe if someone brought me for a coffee or something like that, they were the only times.
“I think I went to one or two of the game in Austin Stack Park, so they were physically demanding. But to be fair, the physical (side) nearly became in a sense kind of rewarding as you start progressing down the line.
“When you were back in the gym and then back on the field, you were nearly seeing benefits or improvements straight away, so it was a bit rewarding in that sense. But the injury was definitely ninety per cent mental, trying to deal with it.
“Those first couple of weeks were tough, watching the games in the stands was tough, but to be fair you were with other fellas who weren’t on the panel, so you had someone to talk to. It was the nights you were at home, lying on the couch whatever nights the lads were training.
“I remember thinking about from about six to nine o'clock just lying there, and they were actually the worst hours of the day when the lads were training and I was at home.
"So it was tough alright, but I remember I was given a book to read about Dan Carter and he was talking about a lot of his injuries. He got one before he was supposed to captain the All-Blacks in the World Cup and it was kind of a case where you could nearly feel a bit sorry yourself, but there’s a lot of people worse off obviously.
“You feel sorry for yourself but eventually you kind of just have to get over yourself and get back on the bike, and that was probably the toughest part - trying to come to terms with it, but once I got a hold of that I started getting more confidence building, and that’s when you started seeing the real progress.”
Ruairí Murphy of Kerry in action against Conor McCluskey of Derry during the GAA Football All-Ireland Senior Championship Semi-Final match between Derry and Kerry at Croke Park in Dublin. Photo by Daire Brennan/Sportsfile
Watching from the sidelines this year meant Murphy was less insulated than he might have otherwise beenf from the commentary around the team among Kerry supporters after last year's All-Ireland Final defeat to Dublin.
Doubts about their midfield options and a perceived over-dependency in attack on the Clifford brothers and Sean O’Shea tended to be top of the list of concerns.
You wonder if the obsession with football in Kerry and the expectancy that often goes along with it might sometimes weigh down the players, but Murphy doesn’t think so, and believes Kerry’s most recent performances are silencing the doubters anyway.
“I wouldn’t change it at all down in Kerry,” he says. “I don’t think people understand it until you are down there and you see how much it means to people. But everyone loves it, and everyone obviously has their own opinion, that’s just the way it is down there and I wouldn’t change that at all.
“It makes for great conversation and a lot of people enjoy going out to club games. Last year even in the few games, obviously the two or three boys are phenomenal in the way they can get scores.
“But I think this year it was more of a mental flick with a lot of fellas to just back yourself a bit more and even just seeing the last day, Joe O’Connor, Diarmuid O’Connor who I think are hopefully going to keep hitting the form they are hitting, they are getting scores.
“We are getting scores from the back which is massive and the way the game is now and the way teams are setting defensively, if you can have lads contributing on the scoreboard it is massive.
“Across the forwards lads are chipping in with a poit or two here and there. It takes the pressure off the lads having to do it constantly, but it also opens up more positions for them in the bigger games if we have other fellas that can contribute on the scoreboard, and the boys can find themselves in even more space and influence the gamer even more than what they were dong.
“So I think it’s something we’ve been looking for, and more and more of an impact off the bench and we are getting it so far. But the real business end of the championship is going to hit now, so it’s a matter of maintaining it and trying to do a bit more.”
Ruairí Murphy of Kerry in action against Frank Burns of Tyrone during the 2023 Allianz Football League Division 1 match between Tyrone and Kerry at O'Neill's Healy Park in Omagh, Tyrone. Photo by Ramsey Cardy/Sportsfile.
Murphy hopes he can make some contribution himself before this championship concludes but he’s not putting too much pressure on himself either.
Regardless of whether he gets to wear a Kerry jersey again this year or not, he believes what he’s endured this year will make him stronger in the long run.
“If it happens it happens it would make the year after everything that's happened, we'll just have to wait and see,” he says.
“You'd like to think you might have found out a bit more about yourself on the whole journey and be hopefully I'm a bit more resilient. A lot of that you won't know until you're looking back at it down the line when you have to reassess going back next year.
“You'd hope you’ve learned a bit more about yourself coming back from the injury that you can take forward for the rest of your journey hopefully with Kerry.”
