The Terry Phelan Hall of Fame wishes to celebrate the forgotten 'cult heroes' of the recent sporting past. This isn't a place where you'll find any of these pampered egotistical superstars who reached the pinnacle of their chosen fields. Our nominees are simply honest decent skins who should inspire a smile when you remember their careers of relative mediocrity. Previous inductees include Terry McHugh, Kevin Maggs and Tony Yeboah.
All the previous inductees have joined Terry for breakfast rolls and orange juice in the green room in Balls Towers as they wait on tenterhooks to find out if this week's nominee will make the cut.
This week’s nomination for your consideration is former Dublin footballer, Vinny Murphy.
Vote in the poll below to have Vinny inducted or not.
So why should he be inducted?
Murphy followed the path of many of the luminaries of Gaelic football and hurling by making his debut for Dublin as a minor in 1988 in the era of the black and white photographs.
Murphy bulldozed through the 1992 Championship like a German Panzer tank and won an All-Star on a Dublin team that was beaten by Donegal in the All-Ireland final. As former red card dodger Dubs legend Charlie Redmond recalls: "Plan A was to pump everything in high to Vinny and if that wasn't working, Plan B was to pump everything in even higher to Vinny. In the unlikely event of Plan B failing, we would revert to Plan A."
Vinny was a substitute on the Dublin team that won the All-Ireland in 1995 and also won two National Leagues and 5 Leinster Senior medals in an illustrious career. Murphy though was perhaps most famous for his playing style which be described euphemistically as playing 'close to the edge.' Vincent Hogan in the Independent described his attempts to 'soften up' his opposite number, 'he works a defender's temper like a circus-hand working a lion in a cage.'
Dropped from the Dublin panel in 1996, Murphy moved to Kerry to play with Kerins O'Rahillys in Tralee under the management of Eoin 'Bomber' Liston. His outstanding performances saw the St Monica's of Edenmore clubman tipped for Kerry recognition under Paidi O Se. Murphy showing the kind of confidence that inspires the love of so many GAA fans around Ireland said, "I don't doubt that I was good enough to get on the panel, if not the team at the time. But I wasn't a Kerry man. I had no Kerry relations. I had no Kerry blood. It was very hard for Paidi at the time because I was the quintessential Dub, as such," Despite this, Murphy did pull on the green and gold shirt in the Munster Hurling Championship against Cork in 1998. When he left O'Rahillys in 2000, O’Rahillys club chairman, Pat Healy, said Vinny had been `fantastic’ and "He was the greatest thing to hit Strand Road and the guys that were cribbing about him originally are sorry to see him go now.’’
After being sent an SOS by Dublin manager Tommy Carr, Murphy returned to play for the Dubs and made a big impact on the 2001 Championship. Despite former Offaly manager Eugene McGee being rather critical of Murphy's entrance as a substitute against his native county, suggesting Dublin "need Murphy's antics like a hole in the head", he helped Dublin eke out a win playing as a 'burly' full-forward .
Then in the famous All-Ireland quarter-final against Kerry in Semple Stadium, Dublin were reeling before the 'King of The Hill' entered the fray. According to the Sean Ryan in the Independent, "His first instinct on his arrival as sub was to test the shoulder strength and the patience of his marker. This simple act of aggression roused from its slumber the blood-lust of the Hill." Murphy also scored a goal as Kerry only just scraped a draw thanks to one of the greatest points of all time.
Murphy retired after the 2001 season but returned to the spotlight in 2009 for this charity boxing match which he of course won.
http://youtu.be/Di9wbKWCjGI
Picture credit: Ray McManus, David Maher, Brendan Moran / SPORTSFILE
