Michael Murphy has warned Donegal of the danger of dropping into the Tailteann Cup following a difficult 2023 season.
Donegal will compete in Division Two next year after being relegated earlier this year and if they were to finish at the lower end of the table they would be in peril dropping out of the All-Ireland race altogether.
Meath, for example, managed to stay in Division Two but their sixth place finish wasn’t enough to safeguard their place in the top tier after Clare reached the Munster final, while Kildare and Cork were also looking over their shoulder as certain results in the provincial series could have seen them demoted also.
Read next: Homeless World Cup selection is a proud moment for Northern Ireland captain
And Donegal aren’t too good to suffer that fate either.
“It is a live possibility,” said Murphy. “I think it has been shown this year, Cork were a game or two away from it and then all of a sudden with maybe a bit better attacking performance against Derry they could have been in an All-Ireland semi-final so everything is live and possible during the National League campaign.”
Murphy acknowledged the fact that a number of younger players have been blooded this year and that it will stand to them, while he is hopeful that experienced players like Ryan McHugh will return to the fold next year but added: “Listen, they are all ifs and we can’t be hanging our hats on that, they need to happen, they didn’t happen last year and they need to make it happen this year.
“Is it is possible [to drop into the Tailteann Cup]? Without a shadow of a doubt, anything is possible now because you need to be on form when you are in Division Two especially.
“Maybe in Division One you have that small safety net of you are going to be in and around the Sam Maguire anyway but Division Two you need to be bang on form and you need to be bang on it from the end of January.”
Donegal’s plight this year wasn’t helped by the fact that Murphy retired last winter after 16 seasons but he says he has no regrets on that front and, despite being only 33, he says he won’t be tempted into a comeback by whoever the next manager is.
“At no stage did it get to the fact that you said to yourself it was the wrong decision.
“You might have got an inkling every now and then like before the hop ball in the Tyrone game, ‘It’d be nice to be stuck in there’.
“But I’m no fool in terms of what's required and to throw yourself in there, you need to be training from October and I wasn't doing that last year.”
While Murphy has ambitions in coaching and management, he ruled out the prospect of putting his name forward for the vacant manager’s job or even forming part of the incoming management team, whoever it’s led by.
“No, listen, with what’s involved with senior inter-county at the moment is full on.
“I had already committed to helping out along with Karl [Lacey] in the academy last year with the underage teams.
“If that kind of project gets back up and going again I think I would probably try and help out in some capacity again with Donegal at underage level, and figure that thing out in an environment that is maybe less pressurised and less time-consuming and where you can maybe afford to make mistakes and learn from them as much as senior inter-county would be.
“So definitely not for me anyway at the moment, no.”
The process that ended with Paddy Carr’s appointment as manager last year dragged on for 97 days and Aidan O’Rourke, who stepped up in an interim capacity from his coaching role after Carr resigned in March amind player unrest, didn’t hang around following the recent Championship exit at the hands of Tyrone, immediately declaring that he wasn’t interested in the job going forward.
Murphy has found the appointment of managers to be too unwieldy in the past.
“It was always maybe seeing if this person would take it or not take it. And you compare and contrast that in the same situation as we were last year looking for a manager, Mayo had four different management panels that were essentially looking for a job.
“And that same hunger for the Donegal role wasn't evident last year. Hopefully it is there this year.
“The process is up and going, there’s calls out for applicants which is due to finish the middle or end of this month and hopefully that’s a sign that the selection process can happen and happen fairly quickly then for August.”
Sign up to our f ree sports newsletter to get the latest headlines to your inbox
