Magic Murphy embodies exactly what Mayo lack

For the guts of sixty minutes, Donegal had Mayo exactly where they wanted them – until Michael Murphy, without looking, handed them a lifeline. It was the kind of moment that cracks a game wide open. Donegal had been keeping Mayo at arm’s length, pruning and shaping the scoreline like a man trimming a hedge. And then Michael Murphy flung a handpass over his shoulder without as much as a glance, a move of pure instinct and borderline lunacy.

It landed in the hands of Jordan Flynn, who set his Mayo teammates galloping off into space. The counterattack was classic Mayo: frenzied, heart-in-mouth stuff, nearly falling apart twice before David McBrien arrived to crash the ball in off the post. Mayo had suddenly roared into a two-point lead.

And there stood Murphy. In the middle of the field. Alone. In that moment, lesser men would have looked to the line for mercy in the hope that they’d see the curly finger. Not Murphy. The game had broken open, and Donegal needed a big man for a big hour. And you do not get bigger than the man from Glenswilly.

Over the winter, in some quiet Donegal kitchen or dimly-lit café, McGuinness sat down for tea and biscuits with his former captain. It wasn’t for nostalgia’s sake. McGuinness is too calculating for sentiment and Murphy too restless to be parked in folklore just yet. The boots had been hung up in 2022, but it’s clear now that he hadn’t yet scratched the itch fully. And like all good managers, McGuinness sensed unfinished business the way a dog senses thunder.

Murphy might not have had young legs anymore, but he still had that old, heavy presence. He had, of course, more commitments than he did when he first started putting on a Donegal jersey. But McGuinness didn’t need the man to give 70 minutes every day. He needed a character, a figurehead, a man who could pull others with him when the ground turned to muck and momentum was turning.

As they clinked their mugs and reached for another hobnob, you can bet it was games like this they talked about. Tight, horrible games. Games with no flow and no fun. Games that are decided not by tactics, but by will and nerve. McGuinness already had a panel with pace and verve and no shortage of skill. He needed someone who could control the contest when a goal had just been conceded, the crowd was rising and the panic was setting in.

McBrien’s goal will have rattled Donegal harder than it rattled the post. They needed Murphy to stand up, even though it was his error that led to the goal. And he did.

He drifted closer to goal, to that old familiar patch of grass where he has left so many defenders grasping at shadows over the years. Suddenly, Mayo defenders were moving not with purpose but with panic, tugged and turned like puppets on Murphy’s string. He didn’t need to be everywhere; but he knew where everyone was going to be ahead of time. His awareness of space was almost indecent – it was like he could read your thoughts before you’d even had them. He opened up corridors for teams with a subtle shuffle of his feet. Teammates ran with conviction because they knew he’d seen the play before they’d even pictured it.

When Shaun Patton found himself under pressure, it was Murphy who ghosted out to the wing and plucked down a high, hanging kick-out like he was lifting a pint off a tray. It wasn’t showy. It wasn’t flashy. But it was exactly what Donegal needed.

He had his fingerprints on every moment that mattered. And even when Donegal didn’t take their chance – like when Colm Reape was caught in no man’s land and was left charging back to his own goal like a man who’d just remembered he left the immersion on, toe-poking Paddy McBrearty’s effort out for a 45 – it was Murphy who calmly stepped up and knocked the kick over. No fuss. No flourish. Just a man doing what needed to be done.

Minutes earlier, it was he who had nudged Donegal back in front. He took hold of the game like a man taking the wheel from a nervous learner. And once he did, Donegal never looked like losing control again.

In truth, it would have been a robbery had Mayo come out of Dr Hyde Park with a draw stuffed into their back pocket. Ciarán Moore’s late winner felt less like heartbreak and more like a kind of mercy, a clean ending to a campaign that had become too disorderly. Championship football, for all its romance, is a machine that grinds down the inconsistent. And Mayo have been the living, wheezing embodiment of inconsistency in 2025. They’ve been as likely to throw a haymaker as to trip over their own feet. There’s a ceiling to how far you can go relying on unpredictability.

When it came down to it, the difference wasn’t just tactical. It was spiritual. Donegal had Murphy. Mayo did not. Leadership of that kind doesn’t come from winter gym sessions or whiteboard workshops. It’s not forged in early morning runs. It’s born with the man. There’s a reason Jim McGuinness made Michael Murphy captain when he was 21. He saw the weight the man could carry and the rare ability to lift others with him.

Mayo simply don’t have that figure at the moment. And the hardest pill to swallow might be that you can’t grow one on demand. You wait, and you hope.

McGuinness knows that, too. That’s why he made the call. He knows Murphy hasn’t come back for the long haul. This isn’t a five-year project. This is a summer raid. The hay is in the field, the sun is out and Donegal have one man who can hear the clock ticking louder than anyone else.

He hasn’t come back to pass the torch. He’s come back to light one more fire.