Donegal need to ‘get over the line’ to start thinking big – Murphy
ONE sentence from Michael Murphy summed up the ongoing frustration he has endured ever since Donegal ambushed Dublin in that famous AllIreland semi-final outlier of 2014.
“You need to get over the line – getting over that line is the big part,” he stressed. “It’s your extra 20 or 30 per cent, to try and do that, and we’ve got to believe. I still believe we’re on the right track. I still believe we’re on the right journey. The team is maturing and we just need to keep pushing at it.”
Murphy (right) was speaking in the wake of Saturday night’s agonising 1-15 to 1-14 defeat to the All-Ireland kingpins.
It was their seventh Croke Park collision with the Dubs since 2014, and they’ve lost the lot by margins now ranging from one point to ten.
Unusually, four of those contests were lost by five points – indicative of Donegal’s ability to push Dublin close but never close enough.
Just once since 2014 have they avoided defeat – that was in the 2017 league, their only encounter outside of Croker, when an injury-time Murphy free salvaged a 2-5 to 1-8 draw for the Ballybofey hosts.
The Donegal skipper has been a fixture of all these previous meetings, starting all bar the 2018 league clash when, on his way back from injury, he came off the bench.
He was colossal on Saturday but his night still ended a couple of minutes earlier than desired sent off for a second yellow card along with Dublin’s John Small in the sixth minute of injury-time. Asked if he felt hard done by for his second yellow, Murphy demurred: “What are you going to say about it? I was a forward trying to get up the field and attack and I get a yellow card, so that’s the way.
“The two of us went down then and all of a sudden, probably because of the length of time we were in the shemozzle, there was always going to be two yellow cards then – but it is what it is.
“You’re going to get that in football, two teams going at it, two players going at it. It was frustrating and disappointing, but we need to learn from it and move on.”
His frustration probably stems not just from another defeat to Dublin in a game where they had led by five. This was part of a recently recurring theme: already in this year’s campaign, Donegal have surrendered winning positions against Mayo, Galway and now Dublin to claim just one draw along with an emphatic win over Meath.
“The Galway one was a wee bit different in that we had a huge lead,
conditions were a wee bit trickier and it was probably us playing well for one half and them playing well for another half,” the three-time All-Star surmised.
“But listen, it’s the same story for us. Something we need to address.
“But it’s the league, it’s the journey, we have to keep going. It was great to get Paddy (McBrearty) back, we’ve another body back and the way the game is played at the moment, it’s a 20-man game; you need everybody coming on.
“We just need to keep building on our squad. Keep trying to get players back who are out injured at the moment, and try to push on and find a couple more players.”
Still, in this cut-throat results business, Donegal are hovering just above the relegation zone purely because of Mayo’s inferior scoring difference.
Asked if he feared their campaign was shaping up like 2018, when performances weren’t matched by points, Murphy admitted: “It could be. We need to get points on the board obviously. But I keep saying, points on the board is definitely something we look towards but the big aim is to really be competitive and really try and build that squad.”
Last word on the Dubs. Murphy was non-committal on whether Dessie Farrell’s version are any different than the Jim Gavin model, but he warned: “They’re still a good team! They’re phenomenal, they’re composed, they’re strong, they’re athletic. They’re playing really, really good stuff … it’s early days yet but they’re still a damn good side.”