A couple of weeks ago the All-Ireland final referees from the last two years received their medals at a dinner in Croke Park. Damian Lawlor from RTÉ grabbed them for a quick chat on stage, and as he waited his turn, Johnny Murphy was struck by something David Gough said. For big football games, Gough has been a trusted go-to-guy for over a decade, a puff of cold breath on games that could be as hot as soup. All-Ireland finals, though, were different.
“‘You know,’ he said, ‘when you’re reffing these games, it’s a blur’. I never felt that because I had never done an All-Ireland [before this year] but I know now what he’s talking about,” says Murphy. “If you said to me inside in the dressingroom at half-time in the All-Ireland final, ‘Who scored the two goals?’ I couldn’t tell you. I just couldn’t tell you because I was just [focusing on] the minute, the [next] minute, the [next] minute.
“I wasn’t looking around. I heard no crowd – I heard no crowd. But I was calm. I wasn’t one bit nervous. Not one bit. It’s very hard to explain. It was just calmness. Relaxed. It comes back to being comfortable in what you’re doing, and comfortable in the way you’re able to referee.”
The old truism is that referees are only happy when nobody is talking about them. That if the referee is part of the story, it cannot be good news. That is not the whole truth. If a match turns into a 24-carat spectacular, some thoughtful commentator will say that the referee played his part. Referees crave the dopamine hit of a kind word too, the same as the rest of us.
As Patrick Collins lined up a free in the last minute of stoppage-time, at the end of extra-time, Michael Duignan said in the RTÉ commentary that the All-Ireland final “had been one of the greatest games of all time”. And even when the volcano had settled and the lava had cooled, first impressions were not heckled by second thoughts.
In the middle, Murphy had kept control without getting in the way. His authority was not intrusive. In the normal course of events, somebody was bound to say that.
“People talk about letting a game flow,” he says. “I’ll leave a game flow if two teams want to play hurling. If they act the fool, this is not going to flow. You look at the All-Ireland final, it was fantastic. It flowed. The reason it flowed, it was not because of Johnny Murphy – okay, I contributed to it – but because both teams played the game. There was no messing. There was no fool-acting. It just makes it easier.”
But even before the last play, and the tug of the jersey that he didn’t see, Murphy had been pulled into the story. With six minutes to go in normal time he collided with Ethan Twomey in the middle of the field and was cut on the forehead. Afterwards people wondered if Murphy had been concussed. If the fourth official should have taken over. If the knock had impaired his judgment in the closing moments. He heard all that too.
“I got to my feet straight away. I gave an advantage to Clare and he put the ball over the bar. Then I put my hand to my forehead and I saw blood. Now, I’m not great with blood. Did it knock me? It did. We stopped the game, kept it calm, cleaned it up. If you look back, I went into my umpire, to check the score. The only reason I went to my umpire was to give myself 30 seconds. Just to reassess. A lot of people said, ‘He should have been taken off.’ No, I was fine – I was fine. I got plenty of belts when I was playing.”
He hasn’t agonised over what happened at the end. When he interrogated his movements, he was satisfied that he was in the optimum position. For 65s or frees from the other half of the field, referees are instructed to stand at the top of the D. When the ball dropped, that’s where he was. He had given himself the best chance. Seeing everything is the supernatural power that people think referees should possess.
When Conor Leen pulled Robbie O’Flynn’s jersey the defender was goalside. From where Murphy was standing, he says, his view of the foul was obscured by O’Flynn’s body.
“I stood exactly where I should have been. Ball came in. What happened, happened. That was it. I was in position. I can only give it if I see it. And when it happened, not too many people saw it [in real time]. Not too many people saw it. I couldn’t see it [from where I was standing].”
When the action replay was dissected in TV studios and on a million hand-held devices, that critical detail was overlooked: the angle of Murphy’s sight. The furious narrative was dominated by a foul that was clear in a wide-angle picture from level seven of the Hogan Stand.
People say to me, ‘Jesus, Johnny, why do you referee? Why would you go through it?’ But when you’re below in Cusack Park in Ennis for Cork and Clare and the place is rocking, it’s where you want to be. You’re over in Thurles, and the place is rocking, it makes it all worthwhile
— Johnny Murphy
But in every tight match, the story is told back to front: what happened last? O’Flynn’s miss and what the referee missed were screaming headlines for an unfathomable game of 67 scores and 111 shots. Dwelling on the ending was the analysis of least resistance. Murphy refused to be dragged down that path.
“I was happy. I was happy with my performance. My bosses in Croke Park were happy with the way it went and that’s all that matters. I’m not on social media. I don’t react to things. I don’t reply to anything. You know, that comes with experience. Three or four years ago [an incident] like that would have affected me. Of course it would. But no, not now. And that’s hand on heart. I was happy with the way it went.
“One thing about the All-Ireland final, the amount of people that got in contact with me, messaging me, e-mailing me, writing letters, cards, it was fantastic – before and after [the match]. Yes, we have apes on the internet and a few letters to me at work and stuff [over the years] but the amount of goodwill way outweighs the bad.”
People forget that referees are competitive too, just like players. Ambitious. They want to reach the highest level and perform when they get there. Eleven years ago, when Murphy was being interviewed for a place on the Munster referees’ panel, they asked him why he wanted to be a referee? “Because I want to referee an All-Ireland final,” he said.
Three years later he was appointed to his first National Hurling League match: Mayo versus Donegal in McHale Park. “People say to me, ‘Jesus, Johnny, why do you referee? Why would you go through it?’ Like, we make massive sacrifices – massive sacrifices. My wife makes those sacrifices too and my umpires. But when you’re below in Cusack Park in Ennis for Cork and Clare and the place is rocking, it’s where you want to be. You’re over in Thurles, and the place is rocking, it makes it all worthwhile.”
For referees the scrutiny is never ending. Every intercounty team analyses the ref, searching for weaknesses and patterns. After the ball is thrown in, the feedback is hot and without value; from the assessors in the stand, it is expert and emotionless. Commentators will have their say, not always expert, not always emotionless. They must absorb all of it, one way or another. Different bins: waste, recycling.
At elite level now they are mentored by a retired referee and in that relationship, there is an element of guidance and succour. To survive at the top, though, every referee must fall down and get up again. The experiences that shape them cannot be outsourced or mediated. Just like players, they must be resilient. Battle-hardened. Tough.
Murphy remembers a league game between Dublin and Wexford in Croke Park, four years ago. On the night he issued three red cards and 13 yellows and blew for 55 frees. There was uproar. “I had two intercounty teams that went absolutely balubas. They acted the eejit all night. The media went crazy. No one came back to me [from Croke Park] and said, ‘None of them deserved to be sent off.’ They all deserved it. Chaos.
“I was applying the rules, but everything stuck with me. Crazy stuff. You have good days and bad days. Thankfully we’ve had a lot more better ones than the other ones. But we’re human. We are human.”
Hurling keeps changing, and once it turned into a possession game handpassing became its wheels. On average, there are more than 90 handpasses in an intercounty game now. Every so often, the issue simmers to a boil. How many of them are executed properly? Not nearly enough. But policing it is like handing out speeding tickets: every penalised player feels like a victim.
“Did he throw it? Did he not throw it? There must be clear and decisive separation [between the hand and the ball]. Clear and decisive is not a millimetre, it’s three inches.”
That conflict has many miles to travel. Do players and managers know the rules? All of them? Not even on a need-to-know basis. Since the black card was introduced, for example, ignorance of its applications is widespread. Murphy was the fourth official at one intercounty match, not long ago, when a manager got himself into a lather pleading for a black card. Murphy asked him to name the three black card offences, and the manager was dumbstruck; he didn’t know.
In the 24 years since Murphy refereed his first hurling match the only constant has been the pursuit of speed: fast, faster, lightning. For referees, it meant that the boundaries of their fitness were forever being challenged. The elite Munster panel train together in Mallow every Tuesday night, but most of the training runs are solitary. In the first week of January, the referees on the national panel will undergo a fitness test in Abbottstown with performance thresholds to meet. Those assessments can make or break a referee’s season.
Murphy played intercounty football for Limerick for 10 years, but he is certain that he is fitter now than he was then. He’s 46. The All-Ireland final lasted 100 minutes. At the end of extra-time Murphy was cramping.
“Some people said, ‘You pulled your hamstring.’ I didn’t pull my hamstring. I was cramping. But you’ve got to remember, three or four players had gone down before me. They’re 20 years younger. I didn’t go down. I won’t go down. I was cramping – I had to get on with it.
“In fairness, Liam Gordon was with me and Michael Kennedy and Chris Mooney [linesmen and fourth official]. We’re all on radios and they drove me on. ‘Keep going Johnny, you only have another two minutes to go.’”
He got there. What happened, happened. Next ball.
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