Eoin Murphy and Nickie Quaid: The two best goalkeepers in hurling face off in a final for the ages

Most of us saw only the save. We saw Eoin Murphy corkscrewing to his right, flicking Peter Duggan’s shot up on to the crossbar. Some didn’t even see that much – they needed a TV replay to tell them Murphy had got a stick to it at all. But on the whole, it was a save everyone could appreciate.

It’s always worth asking the goalies what they saw, all the same. Hurling goalkeepers run in small, tight circles. It’s not unusual for them to train together occasionally in the off-season, working each other to become their own rising tide. Colm Callanan runs coaching schools with Murphy sometimes and has become close to him over the years, close enough to dish out the only praise that has any currency, ie merciless slagging. “I told him it was a save for the cameras,” he says.

Goalkeepers appreciated the save, obviously. Brendan Cummins called it the best he’d ever seen on The Sunday Game that night. But ask any of them about it and they tell you to watch what Murphy did next. Once the ball squirted loose and Diarmuid Ryan popped the consolation point for Clare, Murphy took the ball for a walk behind the goal. Croke Park was settling like a pint of stout and here was the Kilkenny goalkeeper, proving that rushing the process never solved anything.

Freeze the frame. Draw a line up the centre of the pitch from one penalty spot to the other. Of the 28 outfield players, 20 were on the Hogan Stand side of it, including Kilkenny’s main prime puck-out targets. This was no accident.

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“Derek Lyng and Peter Barry were roaring at him,” says Christy O’Connor, coach and author of the seminal goalkeeping book Last Man Standing. “They had set up an overload below the Hogan Stand. TJ and Walter Walsh were out there.

“The way it is in the modern game, often it’s not actually the damage you do on your own puck-out that is important, it’s the damage you limit when you lose one. That’s why teams look for overloads so much off puck-outs now – they know that even if you don’t win it cleanly, you’ll be able to keep it up there and you can get your shape in around it. You’ll wheel in around it and you’ll have a better set-up on the counter-attack.”

Murphy came around by his left-hand post and made his way towards the centre of his goal, all the while looking over towards the gaggle of players under the Hogan Stand. Down between the Clare 65 and 45, Conor Cleary read his body language, saw the massed ranks over to his left and made for the scene. At no stage until the ball came off Murphy’s hurley did it look like he was going anywhere else. Even the cameraman behind the Kilkenny goal was fooled for a moment.

[ Kilkenny hold off furious Clare comeback to set up All-Ireland rematch with Limerick ]

“Murphy spotted that they actually had a mismatch on the other side,” O’Connor says. “Adrian Mullen had Mark Rodgers isolated and he pinged it out to him and Kilkenny got a score out of it from Pádraig Walsh. That’s the clarity of mindset that a lot of people miss with goalkeeping. With these two, as well as their talent it’s their mental strength and ability to think so clearly in the most intense heat that has them at the top.”

These two. Murphy and Nickie Quaid go into the final with very few to argue against the idea that they’re two best goalkeepers in the game. They’ve won five of the past seven All Stars between them. Whichever of them has a day tomorrow will make it six from eight later this year. They’ll presumably both be nominated, meaning that there will only have been one season in the past 10 where neither of them was on the shortlist.

They have their similarities. Both play outfield for their club. Both, in fact, began intercounty life as outfield players – or tried to, anyway. Quaid came into a Limerick set-up in crisis during the dread season of 2010, a jobbing wing forward in a summer that couldn’t be over quick enough.

Donal O’Grady came in to right the ship in 2011 and asked Quaid would he do goals. He was half-reluctant initially, as if he didn’t fancy getting stereotyped because of the family name. But he took up his post and has 12 seasons of virtually uninterrupted service behind him now. Joe Canning calls him Limerick’s most important player and their most underrated.

“Trust is the word,” says Callanan. “The biggest thing for me with both of them is that the outfield players have massive trust in them. You can go through the goalkeeping characteristics and traits and their technical ability. But for me, those guys have been so good for so long that they have built up massive, massive trust with their team-mates.

“What that trust means is that if Nickie sees a pocket of space at wing forward, the Limerick forwards don’t panic and run into it too early. They trust that he will see it and Nickie trusts that if he hits the ball into that space, he’s not going to be looking like an eejit. He knows the run is going to come. He doesn’t need a signal, he doesn’t need anyone roaring from the sideline. Everyone is on the same page, it all happens on autopilot. That’s what trust means.”

“You watch Nickie over a puck-out,” says O’Connor. “He will often hold on to that ball longer than other people. He will wait until the move opens up or until the space opens up. He has no problem holding on to it and not rushing it. If it’s, it’s on. If it isn’t, he’ll wait. He’s just a really good decision-maker. He has obviously worked very hard at it.

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“He has a taste of success now and he is absolutely going to town on it. He probably never thought it would come to him. Look at where he started – nobody from Limerick ever thought they’d be in this position. He’s driving that. Himself and [Declan] Hannon control that whole back area together. That’s what he has made it into.”

Of the two, Murphy is the better shot-stopper. That’s no slight on Quaid – Murphy has had no real equal in the game when it comes to shot-stopping for a few years now. Back in 2018, he was first, second and third in The Sunday Game’s save of the season list – O’Connor still reckons the one he made from Gearóid Hegarty in that year’s quarter-final was better than the lot of them.

“If you look at the one from Peter Duggan,” O’Connor says, “first off, it looks like he dives. But he actually doesn’t. When he stops the ball, he’s on his right foot. For him to contort his body then – not only does he stop the ball, he kind of flicks it.

“It’s like a soccer save – he’s springing off that foot and landing on his side. It’s an unbelievable save. But with Murphy, you’re nearly expecting it now. He’s nearly at the level now where he’s disappointed if he doesn’t make that save.”

Everything feeds everything. Saving a certain goal isn’t just valuable for the three points kept off the scoreboard. It builds like compound interest throughout the team, adding a little to everyone else.

“When you pull off the saves Eoin has been pulling off in the last number of years,” says Callanan, “the confidence that gives the defenders is massive. You watch how Kilkenny defenders attack the ball – the go fully for it, they don’t half go for it or hedge their bets. They have such trust in their goalkeeper that they can commit totally.

“If it gets past them, they have the backup of a goalkeeper who can make those saves. They can go fully for the ball and still know there’s a decent chance they’ll have time to get back and get a clearance in because Eoin will get something on it. So they keep going themselves. They don’t give up the ghost because their man got the ball.”

Two masters of the art. Ready to attack the canvas.