No manager - not even a returning Jim McGuinness - would have swayed Michael Murphy towards 17th season with Donegal.
That was the unequivocal answer that the 33-year-old provided yesterday as it emerged that he will join GAAGO’s stable of pundits next summer having drawn a line under his inter-county career last month.
The news came as something of a surprise at the time and arrived shortly after the lengthy appointment process - 97 days in total - to find Declan Bonner’s successor had concluded, with Paddy Carr given the job after Malachy O’Rourke, Rory Kavanagh and McGuinness himself were all linked with the post.
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But what if Donegal had moved quickly after Bonner’s departure by bringing back the manager under whom Murphy enjoyed his greatest days?
Would it have left him with a far more difficult decision to make?
"No is the definite answer,” he said firmly. “Whoever was the manager, I'm not in a position where I am able to give what I know I need to give.
“I know some players can do that and I know some players can manage and mind at the beginning of the year. Maybe take a Tuesday out or a Thursday day. That would absolutely crawl me, I would be an anti-Christ around the place. I wouldn't be an influence. I wouldn't be doing Donegal a service in a way.
“I look back on it and just realise how fortunate I was to be giving it every single night. Yes there were times you might have been injured but you were still giving it to get back. I just wouldn’t have been able to pick and choose and do it.
“I know some people can, and I respect that, and they can be successful in doing that but it’s just not me.
“So whoever it was coming in to manage it wouldn’t have changed a bit, and I mean that in the strongest possible way.
“Paddy is in now, I had good conversations with Paddy and I explained that to him. I have no doubt he is going to give his all towards Donegal and I will be the first man there supporting and cheering them.”
It’s put to Murphy that, despite the toll that playing at the highest level since 2007 has placed on his body, his retirement is down to a mental tiredness more so than a physical one.
“Ah head, heart, everything I would say, you know? Head and heart, your head can even tell you some things and your heart will tell you some things too and I think head and heart logistically are telling me that that level… and I keep going back to it and keep repeating it is the thing that really was my reasoning.
“The level that I need to get to to help Donegal and get to that desired level that I want to try and - and everybody in the county wants to get to to keep Donegal on the map is a huge level, and that’s not something that I know I’m 100% able to give to.
“And that’s a daily thing, it’s every single day and it’s not a nice thing to be able to say. But I need to be honest about it and I need to realise what I’d be like as a teammate and a player around that environment in terms of helping that, and I just don’t think I’d be helping in that regard.”
Murphy has referenced the qualifier defeat to Armagh in Clones earlier this year which ended their summer as a moment of finality, one which he couldn’t shake in the subsequent months.
His decision to journey home with his parents rather than on the team bus was telling and somewhat symbolic.
“I just knew, I knew that time was up. I keep saying, I stayed in the dressing room afterwards and was the last to leave. Very much the last to leave - I stayed and stayed and stayed.
“The whole decision probably was cemented there, and again you are waiting for that potential turnaround from it, but it wasn’t there.
“It’s a funny one. Probably the location too. I would have went to Clones years ago in the same car with the same two people to watch Donegal as a fan.
“Would have left there in tears crying many a time, disappointed. I don’t know if something came over me but I met the father outside and normally I’d give him the bag to bring home or that type of thing but that time I was bringing it home myself. I threw it in the boot and went home with him.
“That just further cemented my decision. I shared my first drive up there with him and I’ll probably share my last drive with him, that kind of way.
“Listen, I asked myself, ‘Why did I do that?’ Was it a selfish thing to leave the team that time? Potentially, but that was the decision I came to at that time.
“It probably further underlined that was my first step towards detaching.”
And while Murphy departs with an All-Ireland and five Ulsters, a weighty haul by any standard, let alone a county with Donegal’s limited history of success, it’s matched by his losing record in the biggest games having experienced defeat in one All-Ireland and five Ulster finals, most recently this year against Derry.
Having played in his second All-Ireland final in the 2014 defeat to Kerry at the age of 25, he never got past the last eight thereafter.
“There's regret over every year. There's regret over five Ulsters (final losses). There's regret over this year gone past. Over every year that went past.
“2014 is a big one, definitely. It stands out. And the Ulsters, a couple of them, that we didn't… in each of them, and not taking credit away from any of the winners of them games, that's important, but there were times when we didn't just perform.
“We couldn't say that we performed eight or nine out of 10 and came up short. In comparison to where we had performed them games, we were up at that level and we dropped on them given days to six or seven. And we were still close, were still within a kick of a ball. They're definitely regrets.
“Every year from '14, when you were in your mid-20s, you realised that was the level needed to win, to not get to an All-Ireland semi-final thereafter, it was always difficult to take year on year.
“Not that you felt Donegal had any God-given right to get there, that was never the case. But that was always the goal. And for so long, since '14, not to get there was difficult.”
Murphy has dismissed the suggestion that Donegal are now entering a transitional phase in his absence.
Having failed to break through the glass ceiling and reach an All-Ireland semi-final since 2014, despite numerous opportunities to do so, as well as losing their last two Ulster final appearances, it seems reasonable to suggest that their prospects of kicking on next year have not been progressed by the departure of their talismanic figure and that a period of rebuilding awaits.
“Ah listen, what is transition, like?” Murphy wondered. “Every year, you can guarantee that every single one of those teams that we mentioned are going (out) to win. They're going (out) to win the province, they're going (out) to win the All-Ireland.
“Does transition give you grace and allow you time to build? I don't think so. I think this year our boys are well capable. They're in Division One, they're well capable of competing there, they're well capable of competing in Ulster.
“Yeah, there's a famine thereafter in terms of getting to the latter stages of the All-Ireland series.
“But I've no doubt the ability is definitely there. I definitely wouldn't be putting the label of transition on it. I think they're well capable of going and doing it.
“That's not putting pressure on them or anything. That's just where I see it. That's where I see the group or where I hope to see it as a supporter.”
He’s been widely touted as a future Donegal manager and while Murphy doesn’t dismiss that prospect, he’s not as energised about it as he once was.
“Definitely in my mid-20s you would say yeah - fan, player and you want to get involved there [in coaching/management].
“But I think the more it goes on and the more you see what’s involved in it now, I’d be very fortunate to have close relationships with all of those [Donegal] managers, to see the daily levels that they had put into it and what is probably required in terms of outside life, to get that right to be able to get into that and be able to give 100% - you need to have so many ducks in a row there to be able to give 100% of your energy to it.
“I would have a bit more of a question mark around it now than I would have had maybe four or five years ago.
“But there’s no doubt I’ll try and stay involved and keep the eye in and if it comes, it comes but I don’t think it’s as concrete now as it would have been maybe in my mid-20s.”
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