Mayo and Kerry’s breakout star goalkeepers will be pivotal in Sunday’s All

It is fitting, at the end of the most compelling football championship in years, that two of the main characters in the final episode had originally been cast as background talent.

Mayo goalkeeper Jack Livingstone and Kerry shot-stopper Shane Murphy will be among the pivotal players in the outcome of Sunday’s All-Ireland SFC final.

And yet, had the season worked out differently, the best either might have hoped for was to secure a supporting role and a number 16 jersey.

Livingstone’s rise has been particularly unexpected. The 24-year-old Breaffy man wasn’t even involved with the Mayo squad last year, with Colm Reape the first-choice goalkeeper and Adrian Phillips the reserve netminder during the championship.

But when Reape decided to step away this season, Andy Moran had to come up with a solution. He coaxed Rob Hennelly out of retirement and, with Phillips rejoining the county hurling squad, Livingstone was given a chance to stake a claim.

Hennelly played all bar one of Mayo’s league matches – with Livingstone getting game time in round seven against Roscommon. But nobody was really viewing that as anything other than a one-and-done reward for his efforts in the background during the season.

Hennelly started against London in the Connacht SFC quarter-final and also against Roscommon in the last four. However, Mayo malfunctioned that afternoon and Hennelly was one of the players dropped for the All-Ireland series.

Livingstone was handed his championship debut for Mayo’s trip to Monaghan and pulled off more than half a dozen point-blank saves and has held the jersey ever since.

[ Jack Livingstone proving a safe pair of hands for Mayo as Andy Moran’s goalie gamble pays offOpens in new window ]

Former Mayo goalkeeper David Clarke helped out with the current crop earlier this year when their regular goalkeeping coach Paul Durcan was unavailable. And the two-time All-Star goalkeeper was struck by the attitude of the then Mayo reserve netminder.

“I wouldn’t have known Jack all that well. I probably would have just seen him playing the few games we played against them at club level,” recalled Clarke, who was speaking at a prematch media event on behalf of competition sponsors AIB.

“What I got from him straight away was that he’s a really mature kind of guy. He’s not a young fella. I think he understood at that stage that Rob was the undisputed number one in everyone’s mind.

“But what I found from him was how he wanted to get better. He came to me, he’d played a game the weekend before and he said, ‘This happened in the game, can we work on something like that?’

“So, something in my head told me that he’s not a player just turning up training for the sake of it. He had something in him that he wanted to work on and he was specific and detailed in what he wanted to get done, which is a great sign.”

Livingstone wasn’t even Breaffy’s number one for years as the club produced a squadron of talented goalkeepers, including Hennelly and John Vahey. But in many ways he is a poster boy for what can be achieved by always turning up and togging out.

“I suppose it’s just amazing the way things can change in football,” added Clarke, who retired in 2021 after 20 years on the Mayo panel. “He had a debut that you probably couldn’t even dream of against Monaghan, it was unbelievable. He’s continued that on, it’s been a great start for him. He’s a really mature, calm kind of guy is what I get from him personally. That’s showing on the pitch.

“It’s amazing sometimes what can happen when you play free as a goalkeeper and when you’re not putting huge pressure on yourself and you’re getting a huge number of senior games.

“His maturity is probably the key thing. He’s not coming in as a heralded 18- or 19-year-old with pressure on him. He’s coming in just as a solid guy who holds down a job and wants to play for Mayo.”

It is easy to forget Livingstone’s championship debut was only eight weeks ago.

But at the other end of the pitch at Croke Park on Sunday is a player who has also had to bide his time, but in different circumstances.

Murphy, 33, made his championship debut in 2018 but before this summer he had made a total of just six championship appearances.

He has added a further seven championship appearances this summer alone, while also playing in all eight of Kerry’s league games.

[ Dublin asked the right questions, but Kerry’s game intelligence helped them find all the answersOpens in new window ]

Shane Ryan, the 2025 All Star goalkeeper and Kerry number one entering the year, suffered a quad injury in the McGrath Cup final in January and has struggled to get back to full fitness. In Kerry’s opening two games in the McGrath Cup, they had used Seán Broderick and Michael Tansley in goal – so it was uncertain if Murphy would be involved at all with the Kingdom in 2026.

Ryan has been back around the squad for several weeks now but Murphy enters the final as Kerry’s number one and is seen by many as the front-runner to be All Star goalkeeper, which would be quite the achievement to succeed a team-mate in claiming that particular individual accolade.

It is clear the outcome of the kick-out battle at Croke Park on Sunday will be key in determining where Sam Maguire spends the winter. But, irrespective of the result, the Goalkeepers’ Union is guaranteed to have a new All-Ireland-winning number one in its ranks this season.

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