THE 2018 SEASON almost became Diarmuid Murtagh’s last in a Roscommon jersey.
A pacey inside forward who is equally strong off either foot, the St Faithleach’s star is one of the most in-form attackers at the moment. He first came to prominence in 2014, when he kicked a match-winning free against Cork to send Roscommon into the U21 All-Ireland final.
Dublin proved too much for them in the final, but Murtagh banked 2-3 to announce himself as a talent worth watching. He made his senior debut that same year in a Connacht quarter-final against Leitrim. He’s been on the rise ever since.
This week, he earned his first All-Star nomination to cap a season where he kicked 1-22 to finish in the top 10 scorers in the championship. He also reached his 100th inter-county appearance in the FBD final against Galway where he brought his overall tally to 18-266.
But just over six years ago, he was leaning strongly towards taking a year out from football. In his darker moments, he was considering quitting the sport entirely.
A freak injury had altered his trajectory. A ball accidentally struck him on the top of the head at a training session with Roscommon. This was during the old Super 8s portion of the All-Ireland championship, a competition which was brought in to replace the quarter-finals. But Murtagh had more pressing concerns.
A headache after training that night didn’t worry him. Probably dehydration, he thought. Or a slight dose of concussion. But then his eyesight started to deteriorate in one eye. He began suffering from blurred vision which impacted his view during almost every activity. The distortion was there when he was driving, when he was watching TV, and of course, his football suffered.
“The ball would nearly hit me in the face before I could catch it,” Murtagh recalls.
He was referred to an eye specialist who diagnosed Murtagh with a detached retina and told him that surgery would be required to restore his vision. It was at this point that the magnitude of Murtagh’s situation was laid out for him, forcing him to have a rethink about where football stood as a priority in his life.
(Murtagh point at 2.54)
“Your eye is very delicate and I would have been going around with an eye patch mainly when I was outside.
“Things like driving a car and your day-to-day job, [I thought about] how hard that would be if you were to lose a lot of sight in the eye or the full sight? They were the things going through my head but when I couldn’t do any exercise, it’s very easy to think about the negative.
“It’s probably something that I over-analyse everything and overthink everything so I was worrying going back to play football, wondering if it’s worth the risk?”
There were some obvious nerves about returning to the pit but the advice to Murtagh was to tread cautiously with his return to football. And when it came to making a call on his next move, Murtagh realised that playing for Roscommon was the only answer and that he “couldn’t see myself doing anything else.”
Anthony Cunningham, the Roscommon manager at the time, was patient with Murtagh as he gradually made his return to football in 2019. He began with some non-contact activity at training, and by the time he received his first big hit, Murtagh felt a renewed confidence within himself.
By the end of 2019, Roscommon were Connacht champions for the second time in three years after a 1-13 to 0-12 win over Galway. After making his first start of the year in the quarter-final against Leitrim, Murtagh scored a crucial 1-3 in the final to help his county secure provincial honours and put the full stop on a period of personal suffering and doubt. He was back.
“That was a brilliant feeling. Everyone has their own reasons for why they play inter-county football,” he says, “and what it means to them when they win something.
“It was my first championship goal in that game which was extra special for me.
“Everyone has their own little battles that they’re going through and that was one for me that year.”
Murtagh didn’t receive any prior notification that he had made the All-Star longlist for 2024. He woke up to the news along with everyone else last Thursday morning. Roscommon are also represented by defender Brian Stack in the nominations, with hopes that they might have another winner to follow in the footsteps of Enda Smith who became the Rossies’ first All-Star winner since Francie Grehan in 2001 when he was selected at half-forward last year.
“Big footsteps to follow,” says Murtagh about the prospect of emulating his teammate from Boyle.
“It’s always nice to be recognised. You don’t really think about it throughout the year and you’re more concentrating on your team winning, especially as you get older.”
Roscommon’s season finished on a promising note as they reached an All-Ireland quarter-final after a shock win against Tyrone which featured a four-point haul from Murtagh.
Davy Burke’s side emerged from Group 2 as preliminary quarter-finalists following a win-or-bust victory over Cavan, a result which illustrated the importance of the final round of group games irrespective of a team’s previous results in the series.
“It’s more so can teams be playing well at the right time,” Murtagh explains. Roscommon reached this stage last year too, but felt they needed to revise their approach in 2024 after investing too much energy in the games preceding their preliminary quarter-final defeat to Cork.
“Are players fresh at the right time? I did an interview after that Tyrone game and I think I was taken up a small bit wrong in what I said because it looked like we were targeting Cavan as the weakest link. Our point was that with the way the new structure is, the last game is always going to be important, whether you win your first two games, that last game is always going to be huge.
“For us, unfortunately it worked out that we had to win that game to get into a preliminary quarter-final. As I said in another interview, if you told me at the start of the year that we would get relegated but still be in an All-Ireland quarter-final against Armagh, I would have been happy with that.”
Murtagh, however, carries “a small bit of regret” over that Armagh result. While they did fall to the eventual All-Ireland champions, Roscommon were undone by a sending off for Ruaidhrí Fallon and injuries to David Murray and Ultan Harney in the first half. Armagh were still only two points ahead at half-time but a misplaced short kickout in the second half saw Roscommon slump to a six-point defeat.
Reflecting on his own output in 2024, Murtagh is happy with the markers he hit.
“Individually, I was happy enough. I would have set out individual goals at the start of the year and how I would have liked to have performed in each game with the team in mind.
“I felt really good throughout the year and the few things were going the way I wanted them to go. I always reflect on things I want to get better at for the next game. And maybe that helps me a small bit to keep grounded.
“They [the goals] were broad enough. One of them was, as a free-taker, I wanted to score more from play throughout the year [1-10 of Murtagh's 1-22 came from placed balls]. So it wasn’t that I wanted to score a certain amount, I just wanted to contribute on the scoreboard more from play than from frees.”
The 2024 All-Stars banquet will take place on Friday, 1 November when Murtagh will discover whether he made the six-man shortcut in the forwards. In the meantime, he has big business to settle in the Roscommon SFC.
His club St Faithleach’s stunned Clan na nGael in the quarter-finals last weekend, with Murtagh firing a superb 1-7 from play on the way to a semi-final clash. Pádraig Pearses await in that final-four on 5 October after producing a shock of their own by dumping defending champions — and All-Ireland finalists — St Brigid’s out of the competition.
Six years on from contemplating the end of his football career, to approaching one of the peaks of the game. Diarmuid Murtagh’s arc is still soaring.
