Just because you live in the Dublin Mountains doesn’t mean you’re far enough away from hearing any of the rumours coming down from Donegal.
As a matter of fact, a close neighbour with strong ties in the highlands reliably informed me a few weeks ago that Michael Murphy was unquestionably still playing the best club football in Donegal, and Jim McGuinness will have him back next year, just wait and see.
The problem with any of these sporting comeback rumours is that there’s no knowing the exact source. What is certain in Murphy’s case is that he was done with intercounty football, announcing his retirement this time two years ago at age 33 and building a wall of reasons — including starting a popular column with news organisation — as to why he wouldn’t be changing his mind on that. Forget about it.
[ Michael Murphy ends intercounty retirement to rejoin Donegal footballersOpens in new window ]
So when the Donegal county board announced on Wednesday that they were “happy to confirm the return of All-Ireland winning captain Michael Murphy to the Donegal squad for the 2025 season”, well that had the famous McGuinness power of persuasion written all over it.
As sporting comebacks come and go in this country this is big, and while Murphy is still only 35 — or as repeatedly pointed out this week the same age as Paul Conway from Galway, who has just been named the 2024 Footballer of the Year — his two-year absence from the intercounty game must be of some concern.
Compare it to the other big sporting comeback of recent years, when Dublin goalkeeper Stephen Cluxton showed up unannounced for a league match against Louth in Croke Park in March 2023
The drive for any comeback on this scale needs to come mostly from the within the player. With five Ulster titles and five All Stars along with his 2012 All-Ireland, Murphy has nothing more to prove. The talk of the new playing rules having something to do with his decision, and Murphy himself was part of the draft process, may carry some weight, but this is not an entirely risk-free exercise.
Compare it to the other big sporting comeback of recent years, when Dublin goalkeeper Stephen Cluxton showed up unannounced for a league match against Louth in Croke Park in March 2023. Like Murphy, Cluxton had been two full years away from the game. Unlike Murphy, he was 41.
There are lots of people who will tell you that Dublin would not have won back the All-Ireland that same year without Cluxton, but that comeback was his decision and his alone. His was possibly unique too in that he may not have seen any risk involved.
One of my favourite stories of the football comeback is that of Kerry defender Mike McCarthy, who retired at the end of 2006 after a towering performance over Mayo in the All-Ireland. When Jack O’Connor made his own comeback as manager in 2009, he tried repeatedly to lure McCarthy out of retirement, had effectively given up, until McCarthy showed up at training one evening. Just like that.
F Scott Fitzgerlad said that in American lives there is always room for a comeback, but you just can’t come back all the way. Every sport has its own set of comeback possibilities, effectively depending on its level of physicality; and in boxing we know no great career is complete without at least one comeback too many.
In a sport of sheer athleticism, such as athletics, once that power of peak performance starts to fade it’s never coming back. And as tempting as it must have been for Usain Bolt to extend his career beyond the 2017 World Athletics Championships in London, when he was just shy of turning 31, most people will say he choose wisely. When about two years later Bolt touched base with his old coach Glen Mills about the possibility of making a comeback, he was politely told to forget it.
Eamonn Coghlan felt he simply had to get back on track in some shape or form, so starting with the 1993 season set himself the goal of becoming the first man over 40 to run a sub-four-minute mile
“When you retire, that’s it, we’re not going to do any comeback tour,” said Mills.
There are athletic comeback possibilities in other ways, and after Eamonn Coghlan retired after the 1988 Olympics in Seoul, 12 years after finishing fourth in Montreal in 1976, he was already getting on past the peak of his running power too.
Still, after a couple of mildly fattening winters Coghlan felt he simply had to get back on track in some shape or form, so starting with the 1993 season set himself the goal of becoming the first man over 40 to run a sub-four-minute mile. Just when it seemed that might prove slightly more difficult than Coghlan had imagined, he ran 3:58.15 at the Harvard Indoor Track, at age 41, and never raced competitively again. But what a beautiful sign-off.
Behind every sporting comeback there is also the question of what price? Lance Armstrong will forever stand out on this one, given his comeback from cancer to win the Tour de France on seven consecutive occasions, from 1999 to 2005, selling 30 million yellow bracelets along the way, before then announcing his comeback from retirement in 2009 when he finished third in the Tour.
There is no reason not to believe Armstrong might never have been caught for his systematic doping regime during those seven Tour wins if hadn’t returned in 2009 to try to win one more. But it was all the ammunition that US anti-doping needed to try to nail him one last time and so Armstrong’s sporting comeback would instead prove the ultimate sporting downfall.
I see the anger in people, betrayal, it’s all there. People who believed in me and supported me and they have every right to feel betrayed and it’s my fault
— Lance Armstrong
“Listen, I deserve this,” he told Oprah Winfrey on that revelatory January night of 2013. “It was win at all costs. When I was diagnosed [with cancer] I would do anything to survive. I took that attitude — win at all costs — to cycling. That’s bad.
“I see the anger in people, betrayal, it’s all there. People who believed in me and supported me and they have every right to feel betrayed and it’s my fault and I’ll spend the rest of my life trying to earn back trust and apologise to people.”
Armstong paid the ultimate price for his comeback, but there was an element of greed about it too, which is also why any sporting comeback should also be driven by modest ambition. Such as walking back up the steps of the Hogan Stand. In Murphy’s case that’s not risk-free, but certainly worth the gamble.
