I am still playing Gaelic football in my 40s. This is a fact I have done spectacularly poorly to hide (I have, after all, released a book this year at least in part about my complete inability to walk away).
People are always quick to ask why I’m still playing, and my only answer to this query is that if I were to walk away, I would have to replace football with some other, far less enjoyable sporting endeavour.
The idea that I would just balloon in size if I were to step away from eight or nine months of moderate training might perhaps seem outrageous. On the other hand, I haven’t trained in three weeks and belt buckle notches have already had to change, shirt buttons are being tested in strange new ways, shoe-laces are incomprehensibly more difficult to tie.
And so, if I were to decide to knock football on the head, I’d have to replace it with something else. Something age-appropriate...like cycling around town in ghastly figure-hugging lycra, scaring the children and depressing the adults. I have this haunted image of me clacking around in my clip-on cycling cleats through our office, and I want to punch this future version of myself in the face.
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Maybe I could run a marathon, or (marginally less ludicrously) a half-marathon? I could but of course running is an utterly pointless endeavour with literally no upside whatsoever. The training will be torture, but on the other hand at least the event will be exactly the same as the training. It’s the 41-year-olds running half-marathons and triathlons that need their heads examined, not me.
Maybe this is not an opinion held by the majority of people. But it was certainly the opinion of most of the people in the Dublin Masters football dressing room, where I spent this summer.
When I accepted an invitation to go and train with them, I did so with an open mind. I had never seen a game of Masters football before, and I’d never really seen myself lining up for it (who does, I suppose – until they turn 40). But three of my best buddies in the Templeogue Synge Street club had played for the Dubs in 2022, they asked if I’d be interested, and I couldn’t resist.
What I loved first about it was how similar my first few training sessions were to county minors trials, back when we’d all experienced them in the last century. There was a collegiate atmosphere that I was more than happy to join, but when it came to making the team or ensuring you got minutes on the pitch (you can roll unlimited subs off and on throughout the game), it was as competitive and cutthroat as you’d expect.
The fixture-list, of course, ensured that Dublin would have to face my home county of Galway in a key group game, a game to which large swathes of my extended family showed up bedecked in maroon.
At one stage, with my race run by the 45-minute mark, my two nephews materialised beside me on the sideline asking me the score of the game. “We’re four down”, I scowled, before I realised they knew exactly what the score was and were trying to wind me up. Showing them they’d wound me up, it turned out, was not a very successful method of making them stop.
Then there was the game against Louth in Parnell Park earlier in the season, where I jogged to my position on the edge of the square. The full-back viewed me askance, but said nothing. A couple of minutes later, he could hold it in no longer. “That’s you Murph, isn’t it - from Second Captains?”
I said the same thing to him I say to anyone who says this to me - “are you a subscriber, or do you just listen to the free episodes every Monday?”. To which he memorably replied - “ah I just listen to the free shows, I couldn’t be giving a fiver to that c*** Ken Early.”
We played in Dr Hyde Park, Parnell Park, and Breffni Park, where our run came to an end with a heavy defeat in an All-Ireland semi-final to eventual winners Tyrone. What I thought I’d learn more about was why people can’t stop playing football into your 40s. But the more you think you about that, the easier that question is to answer.
What I learned instead was why Masters football is important to those who play it. There will always be one or two familiar names on these county teams, lads who played intercounty football who can’t give it up. But for many players, this is a first chance to represent your county after having devoted 20 or 25 years of their lives to their clubs.
And that informs why it’s worth playing, why the players care so much about it, why it’s not a knock-about for anyone involved. We talk a lot in the GAA about players owing a debt to their clubs. The group of players I was honoured to spend the last summer with were men who had paid that debt, and then some. Getting a chance to wear a county jersey in the autumn of their career is a lovely final dividend.
Ciarán Murphy’s first book “This Is The Life”, published by Penguin Sandycove is out now, and available in all good bookshops.
