Can Murphy pull off another podium placing?
Tinryland AC’s Adam Murphy in action at the 2025 National Senior Indoor Championships.
The entry list for next week’s Nationals revealed stacked fields in some events. None more so than in the Senior men’s 200m. Last year it was a Carlow gold and silver as Marcus Lawler had his best ever national championship run to take gold in a new personal best. Behind him Tinryland’s Adam Murphy took silver, claiming his first ever national senior medal. Going into next weekends championship, both Lawler and Murphy have the top two season’s best, based on the entry list. The unknown is Mark Smith the national record holder who has not yet competed over 200m this year.
It is hard not to feel upbeat and enthusiastic after spending time speaking with Adam Murphy. The Tinryland AC athlete is training well and highly motivated after his two national senior medals in 2025. For Murphy his 2026 goals have always been to stand on the national podium for a 200m medal in both the indoors and outdoors.
The Tinryland athlete opened his 2026 season at the AI Games in early January with 22.17, a run he was not at all happy about. The following week he finished 2nd in the Scottish national championships, running all three rounds of the 200m in one day – a good practice run for the impending Irish nationals. He came away with a season’s best of 21.70, faster than he ran this time last year.
He ran a reasonably similar time two weeks later at the second round of the national league, clocking 21.75. Last weekend he lowered that seasons best to 21.65 at the Connaught Indoor Championships. While he is heading in the right trajectory. But is it enough to get him that much coveted medal? Murphy seems optimistic.
“I am going better than this time last year” he said. “It would be great to see both myself and Marcus there again this year”. On paper Marcus should beat him, something the Murphy himself ceded to. “But the gap while it does exists, is getting smaller”, he pointed out. He feels he is coming into peak shape for this weekend’s race. Ranked second of those who will be competing, like Marcus he is aware that Mark Smyth has not raced 200m this year. There are however, nine athletes who have run faster than 21.85 so far this season.
“Anyone of these could drop to 21.5 or 21.6 at nationals” he stated. The focus for Murphy will be on the 200m heats, where he hopes to run fast enough to secure a good lane for the ensuing rounds. “I would like to think that I could pull off a 21.5 effort at the championships”, he added. Each year brings new horizons for the Carlow athlete, who has not missed an indoor final since 2015. Back then he was a 22.32 athlete, when he finished 5th in the final, in the colours of St Laurence O’Toole.
Murphy like many athletes started athletics with community games winning a silver medal over 200m at the National finals in Mosey. In his early years he ran with St Laurence O’Toole, a club close to his home parish that catered for juvenile athletes. Initially he was coached by Billy Delaney but by his mid-teens he was training under the tutelage of Patrica Almond – former Irish international and mother to Marcus Lawler, His promise as a sprinter was become evident. He represented Ireland at the Celtic International as a juvenile, earning his first Irish green individual vest.
“I loved the relays and for me, running with St Laurence O’Toole has been filled with great memories of running relay races” he said. Whether it was with the club or with his school (CBS Carlow) the teams he ran on were very successful. At the national schools track and field the team of Marcus Lawler, Adam Murphy, Tom Shiel and Eoin Lowery) brought gold back to the CBS. Shiel and Lowrey have since played senior football for Laois.
The quartet who all played Gaelic football at the time, for their respective counties, decided to wear football shorts and socks for their gold medal winning performance. Once again Murphy made a reference to his other love in sport, Gaelic Football. A sport he was actually quiet successful at. The six-foot four sprinter played in goal for the Carlow minor team when he was still u16, his speed somewhat under-utilised. Both himself and Marcus Lawler also played together on the Tinryland football team.
In 2013 that team lost the county minor final, the irony of which being the two fastest men on the team played in the wing back positions. That 2013 final was the last game Lawler ever played. Murphy continued into the following year to be part of the Tinryland team that bounced back to win the minor county final.
Both Lawler and himself continued to train together for athletics right through their college years at SETU in Carlow. After he graduated from college, he moved to Dublin to work as a quantity surveyor. The plan was in place to join a sprinting group in Dublin, but then Covid hit. It was during lockdown that he started to think more and more about Tinryland.
“I am out and out a Tinryland man” said Murphy proudly. “I kept thinking wouldn’t it be lovely to stand on the starting line of a national championships and hear the PA announced Adam Murphy of Tinryland”.
In that same year he made the switch to Tinryland AC. He would love to see the club take on juveniles someday. But he knows that could prove difficult. St Laurence O’Toole have such a good set up and he acknowledges that the club has always been very good to him and still are, allowing him to use the clubs facilities for training, whenever he is back home. His mothers side of the family is the athletics one. His mother Marie Cullen was a sprinter in her day with St Laurence O’Toole and his uncles are involved in athletics in Dublin and Kerry. His Dad is a massive GAA man. His grandfather Andie Murphy was on the Carlow team that won the Leinster football final in 1944. The only time Carlow have ever won the title. He just could not help making that GAA reference again.
Aside from the competing in the Celtic International as a juvenile, he has also competed in the World CSIT games in 2017 in Latvia. On the same team was Andrew Coscoran and Sophie Becker. Murphy considers that 2017 was his big breakthrough year. He won the Junior Indoors, claiming his first individual national title. He also broke the 22 second barrier for the 200m, for the first time and made the Irish u23 relay squad. By 2021 with the embers of Covid well scattered, he joined Dublin Sprint Club. There he was coached (and still is) by Gerard O’Donnell, Aideen Synott and Jeremey Lyons.
Through all the years of training with Marcus, he was aware of the gap between the two in terms of times. Which made sharing the podium with him last year all the more sweet. Not forgetting of course that it was Murphy’s first national senior medal after contesting eighteen senior finals (indoor and outdoor). The target this year is to get to his twentieth.
On the question of making another Irish team, Murphy was optimistic. “I would like to think that I could make a senior international” he said. “If I can get down to a sub 21 second 200m, then it could be possible”. Getting so few tenths of a second lower is not as easy as it sounds. To do so, changes have to be made to his running. Changes which are already underfoot.
For starters, the first 50m or so are the weakest part of his race, where he needs to improve his “bend” running. The fruit of these changes are already yielding dividends. He has been running consistently well over 100m the past year and he is getting stronger and more explosive in the gym.
Working for All Systems Commercial Fitouts in Dublin, is something he enjoys. “I am quiet aware that I am going to make a living out of athletics. I like the balance of both running and work. One distracts me from the other”. For now he has found his happy medium to improve. For next weekend, he has faith in his own abilities and will not check the start lists. He just wants to get out there and run. Run for the medal, run for Tinryland, for himself.
