Galway hurling remembers the lifeforce that was Phelim Murphy

You are not imagining it, you 1970s nostalgists: the summers of your youth really were hotter. At least this one was. Cork met Galway in the All-Ireland hurling semi-final of 1975 – August 17th. Red and maroon mingled on the hottest day of one of the hottest summers on record.

“Blue skies and very, very hot,” Iggy Clarke, who won the first of four All Stars that year, remembers now. “But the heat didn’t seem to matter to us.”

The skies may have been clear but Galway had to smash through a glass ceiling.

“Galway had never beaten Cork, for a start,” remembers Frank Burke, one of the four Galway goalscorers, along with his club-mate PJ Qualter, John Connolly and Gerry Coone. “In 88 years. And Cork had never lost a semi-final in 88 years, as well. They had 21 titles. I think Cork might have thought it was a foregone conclusion.”

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What unfolded was a fireworks display in dazzling sunlight. Both sides defied the punishing heat. The game finished 4-15 to 2-19, a landmark two-point win for Galway. And Cork had trailed by a hallucinatory nine points 11 minutes out from full-time. They responded with a combination of stung pride and natural excellence to reduce it to just one: a John Connolly 70 tilted Galway hurling on a new path.

On his leather swivel seat in the shade of the Hogan Stand press box, Paddy Downey set the day in context with his opening line for The Irish Times. “If the west slept the sleep of the dead in the numbed arms of Sligo a week ago, it awoke to rage like a forest fire in the persons of 16 Galway hurlers in Croke Park yesterday.”

It was an awakening all right, one that Galway had been building towards for years. On Monday last in Turloughmore, several generations of famed hurlers lined up to pay their last respects to Phelim Murphy. The godfather of Galway hurling died last week at the age of 91. He was a lifeforce: a farmer since leaving national school, raising with his wife Nelly 15 children and also cultivating the transformation of Galway into a perpetual force at national level.

The line of mourners at his wake lasted seven hours, a reflection of the indelible impression as an administrator, first as club chairman with Turloughmore when they went unbeaten within the borders from 1961-66, and later with the county.

“And a lot of the strategies he used then he applied to Galway a decade later,” says Frank Burke. “Gerry Cloherty set up the hurling board very much in association with Phelim Murphy. I think they modelled it on the football board set up by the legendary Tull Dunne in the 1940s. They were aware that to have any success you needed funds from the beginning.

“So, for instance, they set up the Turloughmore carnival, which ran for 13 nights over three weeks. They would erect a four-pole tent down behind Murray’s bar in the village. So they could fund their physios and everything. They had a great emphasis on looking after young players away in college or working in London. They would fly them or bring them back any way they could. Frank Coffey was captain in ‘64 and he was flown back from holidays in Italy for a championship game. And he scored 2-11.”

Burke himself was enjoying a student summer of work and hurling with Shannon Rangers in Chicago in 1972 when Joe McDonagh, also in the city, reached him by phone. Had he heard that Galway had made it through to the All-Ireland under-21 final? Well, Phelim – a joint-manager of that team – had been in touch and wondered if Burke and McDonagh, could make it home.

“There will be two tickets at the Aer Lingus desk at Kennedy Airport next Tuesday night,” Murphy said. “If ye want to come back.”

They did. That under-21 All-Ireland winning team formed the spine of Galway hurling through the 1970s. There were wobbles: a 20-point tanking by Cork in the league; a loss to London in the 1973 All-Ireland quarter final. But the team was getting stronger and during the league season of 1975, manager Frank Fahy brought Inky Flaherty in as coach. Flaherty had played 18 championship seasons with Galway without winning a game and was adamant that things could be different for this generation.

“And one of the things Inky did was he got us to believe in ourselves,” says Clarke. “He was a passionate motivator and he instilled into us that we were as good as anybody else.

“He was a psychiatric nurse so he had that psychological side to him. He was refreshing for us. We were at a stage where we were probably good and skilful but in a lot of games were beaten in the last 10 minutes. They came to an inevitable end. And this new belief and emphasis − Inky was a famous boxer too and he was resilient and very dedicated himself. And he took nothing less from us. So he was a huge factor in our development.”

Galway edged out the hurling bluebloods on their way to winning the 1975 league title. But an affirmation of the old order was expected on that scorching August day in Croke Park.

“It was a watershed, really,” Clarke says. “For us, leading into it, it was a David and Goliath contest. We had won the league. But Galway had never won a semi-final since 1953. And Cork were Munster champions. That we could win it felt like a whole new era. It was a kind of confirmation that we are here and here to stay − in so far as we can.”

Kilkenny were waiting in that year’s final. It was the week when Éamon de Valera was laid to rest. But some things never change. “Kilkenny hit us like a thunderbolt,” Clarke says.

Five years later, Galway won their first senior All-Ireland since 1923. Frank Burke and Iggy Clarke were on the team that completed the transformation, with Clarke unable to play the final because of injury. In the 1980s the maroon bloomed into a spectacular hurling force and Galway hurling has never gone away since.

Cork played and beat Galway in championship hurling 19 times before that 1975 match. Since then, the counties have met 14 times and Galway have won on eight of those occasions.

Phelim Murphy served as hurling secretary until 2004 and was one of the last of the dynastic figureheads in GAA folklore. Frank Burke laughs as he suddenly sees a vision of Murphy at the check-in desk of the Burlington hotel, on some All-Ireland final weekend.

The European Council was in town and had booked a floor or room reserved for the hurlers. Phelim let them know that unless the Galway hurlers got the floor they’d reserved, he was pulling the whole show, European Council or not – and that Galway would be back for plenty of Septembers.

“He was strong and tough. He knew what was required to be successful. I cannot see a man like him coming along again. He was a very religious man, a family man. The thing about him is I never saw him with a notebook or diary. I was 25 years with the club and I can say that every game I played, he was in the dressing`room.

“I was 13 years with the county. Every game I played, he was in the dressing room. And he seemed to be at every training session. Over 40 All-Ireland titles came to Galway under his spell. And I never heard him say: I forgot that. He never seemed to forget anything.”