HEโS NOT FROM a rugby hotbed, heโs not really sure what position heโs best suited to play and given he studied German in school, heโll need to try to break the language barrier as well.
Still thereโs no masking Michael Murphyโs enthusiasm for his next sporting project, heading to the Massif Central in France to try out the life of a professional rugby player with Top 14 outfit Clermont Auvergne.
Itโs part of โThe Toughest Tradeโ โ the brainchild of GAA football championship sponsors AIB โ which has seen in recent years Kilkennyโs Jackie Tyrell try baseball, Armaghโs Aaron Kernan experience soccer, Tipperaryโs Brendan Maher sample cricket and Mayoโs Aidan OโShea get a glimpse of American Football.
Murphy jumped at the chance when it was offered to him. Last week Welsh rugby great Shane Williams was immersed in Gaelic football life with Murphyโs home club Glenswilly.
โI met him (Shane Williams) the first day when he was up and I barely laid eyes on him for the week,โ says Murphy.
โHe seemed to be quite busy and thatโs generally all I know. The lads got on very well with him in the club, they had a very good word on him.
โThe brief meeting that I had with him too is that heโs a lovely fella. As I say, I heard he scored four points.
โWe were training that night, not too far away with Donegal and it was a bad one, going through the full elements.โ
A trip to France is a novelty at this time of year for Murphy compared to the usual grind and hardship of pre-season training with Donegal.
โOnce I heard the rugby thing, it definitely was something that would have interested me. The time of year, everything just works out perfectly to go and give it a rattle.
โItโs a game I havenโt played too much of. It wasnโt huge where I was growing up back at home in Letterkenny. It was always a game I would have followed, would have watched.โ
His time in college in DCU allowed him to have more of a front-row view of rugby.
โItโs just a game I do enjoy watching. When I was up here in college over the four years too, got to a good few of the Leinster games, couple of the Ireland games, various things like that.
โIt probably would have been one of the sports I would have liked to have played if it had have been a wee bit more prominent back home. Yes, I would sit down and watch soccer, Iโd be a Liverpool fan but after that itโd be rugby. I just enjoy watching it, I enjoy the physical nature of it.
โIโd be watching more European stuff rather than watching the weekly French rugby. I would know a bit about Clermont, you would have seen them in the Heineken Cup. I know a few of the Claremont players, Fofana, Parra, and Rougerie is still knocking about too. It would be good to possibly meet them and rub shoulders with them.โ
What position he will have to get to grips with remains to be seen.
โNot a clue, hopefully somewhere not in the front row anyway!โ, laughs Murphy.
โI donโt think I would have enough mastery of the oval ball to play fly-half! You would think somewhere along the backs, I would think anyway.
โObviously the challenge of being able to hold and kick an oval ball is going to be something to get used to. The challenge is set out there and I will go for it and try to nail it anyway.โ
Heโs not concerned about the prospect of incurring injury or that the experience will hinder his upcoming season with Donegal.
โObviously itโs something thatโs going to be thrown at us, the possibility of getting injured. Come here, you could just as easily get injured at a training session back home.
โI certainly wonโt be going into it like that. I will be going into it to try and get as much out of the week as possible, whatever is in store for me, to get into it, learn as much, and really challenge myself.
โIโll be back in sufficient time for the first national league game. I have done a hell of a lot of training so far this year and being away for five or six days isnโt going to affect things too much. Iโll be back with 10 days to go before the start of the national league.
โI donโt know the actual whole itinerary but what Iโm expecting is to be going over with the first team and to figure out what theyโre at on a week to week basis.โ
Adjusting to a sport with a defined tackle will be a notable difference.
โI did a bit in Australia the time with the compromise rules. I donโt know if itโs a similar tackle, itโs probably a lot more technical than that tackle was.
โThat tackle was just you get the player down in any way possible. Iโm sure there could be a couple of crossovers there but, again, thatโs the bit of the apprehension I have with it.
โIt looks physical but Iโd say itโs a hell of a lot more technical. Anything in and around a ruck is going to be one of the main challenges over the course of the week.โ
The mention of Australia links in Murphyโs previous brief foray into professional sport. The Donegal captain was a prime target as a youngster for Australian Rules clubs, with Geelong at the head of that pack chasing his signature.
But Murphy reckoned homesickness would have affected him too greatly and he turned it down. Five years ago he captained Donegal to Sam Maguire glory and is enthused about the prospect of leading a Donegal squad in 2017 that is infused with youth after being stripped of experienced figures over the winter.
A stint playing rugby with Clermont Auvergne in late January is a pleasant warm-up for the year ahead.
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Mike Ditka is an idiot. His response was entirely predictable.
Unsure where this protest is going. Aside from anything else, itโs been fun to see the likes of Ditka, Jerry Jones etc. get their knickers in a twist.
It really is quite scary how jingoistic some old people in America are. Itโs a feckin national anthem lads, get over yourselves. There are things bigger than you or it.
Kapernick is fast turning into an absolute hero. Thereโs nothing wrong with being proud of your country and itโs military, but putting a flag and some quaint old song ahead of peopleโs lives has no place in todayโs society.
Think the whole thing a class issue rather than a racial issue. The entire protest is a load of codswallop.
@ET PHONE HOME: Class and race go hand in hand in America
Facts please Stephen.
Not your opinion!
Itโs marked as an opinion pieceโฆ
Hi Eddie,
A) Itโs an opinion piece as Redzone has been for five years now.
B) Itโs clearly marked as opinion piece.
C) As for facts, Keith Lamont Scott was shot dead by a Charlotte-Mecklenburg police officer, Mike Ditka is an idiot and Colin Kaepernick has right on his side. Not sure what more โfactsโ you need.
D) Have a nice evening.
Oooooo, thatโs a deep burn Eddieโฆ.
Are those Eddieโs options? I would go with E. Read the piece first before commenting! I ainโt no journalist writer type person but itโs always best to leave out such things as calling someone โan idiotโ, regardless of how true it may be, it just stoops to a level it doesnโt need to go. โThe moral high ground to which you aspire could turn into into a slippery slope.โ As for my optionโฆ Iโm gonna pick D.
Another fact might be that he had a gun and disobeyed both the police officer and his relative who were shouting at him to stop multiple times. Another fact might be that 5 white men were also shot dead by police the same day. Another fact might be that not one of those shootings resulted in race riots where black people were getting attacked by vicious mobs of whites, looting stores, destroying public and private property. A reactive opinion on those facts might be that were such riots were to take place the people perpetrating them would not be mollycoddled by the media and referred to as โprotestersโ. There are 2 sides to every story. I respect your opinions and thank you for writing the article but my personal assessment of the facts leads me to a conclusion different to yours. Which I am sure you will respect also.
What the some of the cops have been doing is totally wrong but there are 30 shootings plus a week in Chicago black/black crime and there has never been any protests about it.
They are all on the bandwagon at this stage. CK tryna be relevant because he hasnโt been that on a football field in almost 3 years
Colin Keapernick is performing a peace civil protest designed to engage. Itโs worked, it seems blacks arenโt allowed to protest peacefully or with violence without criticism. Fyi, there have been many many protests about crime in Chicago and beyond. You just donโt hear about it, why? Because their black and Noone gives a chitโฆ.. until those protests are about the white establishment.
I think one thing everyone can probably agree on is that the race issue and trouble at the moment in the US is one hell of a complex , emotive and deeply polarising subject. Rights , wrongs , double standards and hypocrisy on both sides.
YouTube Shannon Sharpe heโs brilliant at explaining. You will understand it after.