Before we start with Dr Con, a great injustice should be undone.

UCC last won the Cork SHC in 1970. “Though you’d think they won it every second year from the hullabaloo at the county convention,” snarks the college hurlers’ long-time medic, Dr Paddy Crowley.

Con “pucked around” in College, as Paddy tells it. He didn’t make the first 15, or the subs. But the following year — that was how it worked then — the College were out in the Munster Club Championship. In the middle of July.

“We played Clarecastle in a replay on a Friday evening, in Kilmallock, I think,” recalls Dr Crowley. “We had nobody. Well, we had about eight county hurlers. Pat McDonnell from Cork, John Kelly of Tipp. Seamus Looney, lads like that. Except we had nobody else. We were picking lads up in Mallow on the way, lads who never went to UCC.

“So Con played, inside corner-forward, in the company of Ray Cummins and Mick Crotty of Kilkenny, who won four All-Irelands.

“There was hardly anyone at it and we were beaten, but Con scored a goal.

“Except he was broken-hearted the following day when the Examiner attributed the goal to Ray Cummins. There was a passing resemblance at the time between the two tall, lean fellows, but it was purely an off-the-field resemblance.

“I always say it was the high point of his career. But the slagging after was something wicked. I don’t think he held a grudge against the Examiner.”

Where can you start except at the heart of the matter?

“For me, Dr Con is the epicentre of Cork GAA,” says Dónal Óg Cusack. “People talk about great GAA people and the spirit of volunteerism, I have never encountered anyone in the association who has given more of themselves to others in the spirit of the GAA than Dr Con Murphy.”

“An iconic figure,” says Donal O’Grady. “To anyone who’s had anything to do with Cork GAA since the 70s, Con was the continuous link.”

From inauspicious beginnings… Con Murphy’s first great contribution to GAA volunteerism was to mind the jerseys for Canon Michael O’Brien’s Dean Ryan Cup (U16½) team at Farranferris College, where Con and Paddy studied.

Alas, Con lost the jerseys.

“All hell broke loose below in Páirc Uí Chaoimh,” Paddy recalls.

The Canon was apoplectic, as you can imagine. That began a 40-year relationship with the Canon that had its ups and downs.

Dr Con has had relationships with nine Cork All-Ireland winning managers, including the late Canon, as well as too many other senior and underage bosses to count.

“He just blended in. Whatever group was there, he gelled with them, and he helped them to gel as well,” says O’Grady, who led Cork to the hurling title in 2004.

The first group was Fr Bertie Troy’s hurlers in 1976. It’s accepted now, whether legend or not, that the young trainee doctor was added to the ticket by Denis Conroy of the county board because Con happened to be driving Jimmy Barry-Murphy to Limerick for the Munster opener with Tipp.

Billy Morgan soon had him stitching and stretching the footballers too. And Dr Con hasn’t sought payment or thanks since for unbroken service to Cork and UCC. Though in an interview with Tom Humphries for The Irish Times in 2010, Dr Con admitted delight at one great reward early in his tenure.

Christy Ring was a selector when the first of the three in a row was banked that September of ‘76. Dr Con was unsure where he stood with Ring — a man he idolised like everybody else in Cork — since Con’s dad Weesh had differences of opinion to Ring’s Glen Rovers during Weesh’s county board days.

Then one day Con was walking up Patrick Street and Ring came running after him.

“Thanks a million, Murphy.”

What greater reward could you want?

Dr Con quickly attracted a reputation for accuracy of diagnosis and recovery time.

“He fell into the role but what a massive advantage to Cork that he did,” says O’Grady, All-Ireland winner as a player too in 1984.

“Whenever I had an injury, and the match might be two weeks out or three weeks out, the thing that impressed me most was he’d tell you you’d be right by the Tuesday night before it. And he’d be spot on. He had that uncanny knowledge and instinct.”

There might have been some psychology involved there too, though two decades later O’Grady noticed the same reliability of prognosis.

“As a manager, he’d tell you whether a guy will make it or he won’t. And he’d be spot on, which is what you need.

“He knew his stuff. He was ahead of other people at the time. You have cryotherapy chambers and all sorts now for recovery. But that time it was basic physio, and Con would tell you what was what. And he was always on the money.”

Sadly for elegant All-Star forward Colm O’Neill — football All-Ireland winner in 2010 — he saw too much of Dr Con in a career plagued by knee problems. He grew used to watching him dial numbers and pull levers to shift the system into top gear.

“A call would be made. And in a matter of minutes there was an MRI and in another hour or two I’d have an appointment scheduled for a meeting with the surgeon down in Waterford. It all happened so quick. People ring Con and he’d always get you in front of the best people. He’d go out of his way for you.”

“A lot of players went through tough injuries and he has facilitated various things for them. Even just talking it through for fellas,” says Conor Counihan, manager of the 2010 champions.

“From a Cork point of view the service he has given is phenomenal. It’s gone beyond Cork and beyond GAA, in terms of people he has looked after.

“But from a Cork players’ perspective, for many of us, he was our doctor and still remains our doctor. He’d never say no, he was always there at the end of a phone if someone had a problem.”

O’Neill carries a chilling memory from before the 2009 final. “We stayed down in Johnstown House in Enfield, in Meath. The morning of the final, after breakfast, before the team meeting, a child got into trouble in the pool. Serious trouble. Con was called to do the resuscitation and brought the child back to life.

“With the whole hype around the final, it went under the radar, and Con had no interest in limelight or talking about it.

“We had the small job of playing a match after that, but Con had a life saved.”

Funnily enough, for a guy who already saw too much of Dr Con, Colm O’Neill couldn’t get enough of him.

I’d have made it my business to be in his company on the weekend of a big match. When you’re in a conversation with Con, the stories are flowing and it takes your mind off the match a bit. I’d go out of my way to get near him, he put your mind at ease.

When they stayed up in Killiney before a final, a gang would head down to The Forty Foot for a dip on the Saturday night, Con dispatched to mind them, just in case.

“Any time we meet up now, he always mentions that,” O’Neill says. “Those are memories you treasure forever, really.”

Limerick manager John Kiely spoke lately of the need to control the temperature of a camp, praising the All-Ireland champions’ psychologist Caroline Currid for her guidance on when to lift or dip the mood.

“Before they were ever defined as sports psychologists, Con had that,” says O’Grady. “Because he has a great understanding of people and a great sense of humour and could lighten things up when they needed to be lightened at times. We wouldn’t always see that, but Con had a knack for doing that, for putting fellas at ease.

“In the dressing room or on the bus maybe, I don’t know what it was but he had it anyway. I won’t call it a sixth sense, but he had a sense of what was right and what was right at the correct time. Putting people at their ease. Making people feel welcome. He had the attributes that help lighten the mood and gel the team together. And he was very close to the players.”

“On big matchdays, it could be a bit tense, and he’d come in then with some ridiculous comment,” Counihan remembers. “Maybe we’d be ready to go out and he’d say, ‘sure what about it lads, if we’re bate by 10 points’. Some old thing.”

“He was very good to read an atmosphere,” O’Neill says.

At half-time in the 2010 final, Cork trailed Down by three points, eight to five.

“He came into the dressing room before Conor and he could feel there was tension.

“And he just shouted. ‘WE ARE NOT NERVOUS’. He just wanted to get that message across.

“He told me after he went into the toilet and nearly puked he was so nervous himself.”

‘The Doc’ is often known as ‘the extra selector’.

Counihan laughs: “If you asked him about a player who was struggling, he’d say ‘do you want my medical opinion or my selectorial opinion?’” “That’s Con, alright,” O’Grady chuckles. “He was around teams all his life. And seldom if ever was he off the mark in that regard.

“I asked a lot of people their opinion, but you always put great store on Con’s opinion. He was watching things from a different dimension. He saw things you mightn’t see. You’d always trust him. He mightn’t have been an official selector but he always brought great insight.”

The footballers had only one axe to grind with him.

“We do give him a bit of slagging about his strong Kerry affiliations,” smiles Counihan.

He started out with Kerry first as a doctor. We figured they had infiltrated him, because they have a soft spot for him and he for them. He was with them for one or two of the finals, that famous four-in-a-row team. And there was one day, when Kerry were playing Cork and one of the Kerry fellas got a bad bang and Con jumped up off the bench to go out to see him and all of a sudden realised he was with Cork that day.

We certainly have a go off him for that.

Ah yes, Kerry.

Dr Con Murphy spent a year in Tralee General in 1975, interning with psychiatrist Brendan Lynch.

“I got to know him that time,” says Mikey Sheehy. “We used do a good bit of socialising with Connie.”

Legions of Kerry footballers that passed through UCC’s gates socialised with him too, men like Sean Walsh often availing of Murphy hospitality on the Western Road. And so there was Dr Con in Mick O’Dwyer’s dressing room before the 1981 final with Offaly, treating Sheehy.

“It goes to show the respect he had. Not too many Cork fellas would be left into a Kerry dressing room.

“I got a bad injury playing a county championship match about five weeks before the final. A leg block. Got the studs full force on my instep. Those days, the x-rays wouldn’t pick up a break of the small bones. But I couldn’t train, I was just doing a bit of bike work and that and said to Micko, ‘I don’t think I can play’. It was my right foot, my kicking foot, and you had to kick frees off the ground those days.”

A metatarsal or two, probably, in post-Beckham parlance.

“What about Dr Con?” Mick O’Dwyer suggested.

”I remembered driving up to Cork with the late Joe Keohane on the Friday before the final. Myself and Con and Joe went down to the Mardyke with a ball. And I togged out.”

Dr Paddy Crowley remembers the deputation well.

“It was very hush hush. They were going for four in a row, remember. And there was a big question if he’d be able to play at all.

“Con asked me to go down with him, and we went into the Mardyke. Mikey kicked a few frees.”

Mikey winces.

“Con gave me a couple of jabs into my ankle and instep. Same as getting a filling. And then you feel nothing. I had no feeling in my foot at all. I wasn’t sure how it would work.

“We met up again the following day, heading for Dublin, and Micko said try it out anyway. So we did the same thing in the dressing room. I got jabs from Con.

“I remember the first free, I didn’t raise the ball hardly off the ground. People must have wondered. But lucky enough we didn’t get too many more frees on the day. I was in a bit of pain, but I got a couple of scores, and Micko was saying ‘you’re doing fine, you’re keeping a fella occupied anyway’.”

Mikey’s affection is plain.

“A great man, a very good friend of all our family. To my father, Lord rest him, and my uncle. Con is such a nice man. I’ve so much respect for him.

“When we played Cork, he was a Rebel for sure, but Micko just trusted him.

“He’s an institution in the GAA, in Cork and Kerry and in every other county. You’d never hear a bad word about him. He’s so obliging, he puts everyone ahead of himself. For a busy man, he’s always in good form, always a smile.

“Even the last few years with Kerry, you’d meet him at league games and championship matches and you’d have a chat. Win lose or draw, it was the same Con. Around Páirc Uí Chaoimh and Killarney for football games it won’t be the same without Con. So long may it continue.”

He stitched and stretched them in Tipp dressing rooms too, this doctor without borders.

Nicky English pops out of Brexit discussions at Barclays Bank to take the call. To discuss the sort of man that might be needed yet to get heads together on that front.

He stitched Nicky for the first time in 1981, in his UCC days. “And many times since.”

“He stitched me once when he was the Cork doctor at a league match and I was playing for Tipp, having been accidentally hit by another Tipp player. He has been the doctor in a Tipp dressing room for me and in a Fitzgibbon Cup dressing room for me.

“He is the greatest example of GAA volunteerism I’ve ever known. But more importantly, I’m delighted and proud to call him a friend and a mentor and confidante.

“And if I ever go into hospital still, the man I put down as my doctor is Dr Con.”

Galway two-time All-Ireland winner Padraic Joyce got to know Con first at the International Rules series Down Under, in 2003.

“He was team doctor slash entertainments manager. He was brilliant fun. He was more like a father figure to us. He was serious and a good doctor, but he’d be always having the craic as well. He’d be talking to fellas and getting to know them and getting to know how they were feeling. And then he’d be holding court, telling stories.

“He had a way about him with a particular type of player. With the kind of player who needed attention he’d give it to them, but with a lad who needed to be bucked up, he’d say go on away, you’ll be fine. A lot of it would be in the mind.”

In a way, Con was a prototype social network. A hub. A conduit for necklaces of friendships to form.

Joyce fondly recalls an hour on the top floor of the team’s Melbourne hotel, landing in on Con having a brandy with Donal Lenihan at four in the afternoon, watching rugby.

Donal, Con’s friend of 40 years, remembers it as “that famous weekend when the Irish took over Melbourne. Ireland-France in the rugby, the Compromise Rules and the Melbourne Cup, one day after the other.”

Donal and Moss Keane bonded through Con, at UCC, before they ever binded in the second row with Munster and Ireland.

“Con was instrumental in my own career, in terms of injuries,” says Lenihan. “One time in Australia, I was in big trouble with an AC joint, possibly having to come home. The days before mobile phones, I remember going into a phone box in Sydney, with 40 coins, ringing the Western Road.

“And he talked me through what had to be done. Con was always there when you needed him. You talk about volunteerism and the service he has given to the GAA, in particular in Cork, but far outweighing that is the personal bond he built up with all the players involved.

“There’s an electricity factor around Con, he just bonds with people. At this stage he’s a good bit older than the young sportspeople he’s dealing with. But he can connect with young people immediately.

“He is a confidante way beyond their sporting lives, whether it’s education, medical or whatever. In terms of offering advice, career-wise, family-wise, he’s almost like a counsellor.

“We’d meet once a month for lunch. And not a lunch goes by where his phone doesn’t go off and a fella from Kerry or Galway or wherever is either looking for something, or some advice. An illness maybe or a second opinion.

“That’s the most striking thing to me. Cork GAA and UCC were the conduit for it, but it goes way beyond that. That’s what makes him special and that’s what people identify with.

“I reckon he gets invited to around 15 weddings a year.”

Con was there with his wife Joan last September, in Nerja in Spain, when Colm O’Neill married Claire.

He got plenty back too. The love of a community. And doesn’t he hold the record as the only man to take home four county medals in one year?

“He was secretary of the football club in UCC,” Dr Paddy Crowley says, “the year he qualified in ‘73. The College won the Cork county senior. And in the county final they had 17 players, but they got 21 medals, so he had four left over.”

A third generation of Murphys will nudge the family link to Cork GAA ever closer to the century mark.

Weesh ended ‘The Emergency’ in 1945, Cork’s first football All-Ireland since 1911. With a shorter famine yet to be concluded, Con’s son Colm is now the official team doctor with the hurlers, though Con remains ‘The Doc’.

Through all the local disputes and squabbles, he remained a unifying force. Perhaps that’s why he ranks the UCC jersey as his favourite, with its pull across all divides.

“The skull and bones. It’s a wonderful symbol. The symbolism, the pride in the shirt. Coming together.

“The jersey is a great unifying factor,” he said in an interview a few years ago.

“They wouldn’t listen to me,” was a standard gambit, when he was pressed on whatever dispute was raging in Cork.

But they listened on all sides. And laughed.

“The man is the upside to feeling sick. I can go into Con and be so entertained,” says Dónal Óg.

“As long as I have known him he has been a doctor, coach, selector, father figure, and friend all wrapped up in one bundle of goodness. And I know that relationship with Con is repeated for countless others.”

To Cusack’s team-mate Joe Deane, Con was all the other things everyone says he is. But Joe needed a doctor more than most.

Joe won’t forget easily the Monday evening in 2006 when he walked into The Pink Clinic on the Western Road and was diagnosed with testicular cancer.

“I was able to ring Con afterwards and call to the house. My girlfriend, my wife now, we went up to the house. Con was above. Con was crying, the girlfriend was crying and I didn’t know where to look. He cares so much about the people he knows, his patients.

“The following morning I met Con for breakfast at half seven, To talk through it. I was onto him every second day.

“Every step of the way he was always in touch, just to keep an eye on you. See how things are going. To have someone that caring on your side was fantastic.

“He’s been brilliant for Cork, and for all the lads who have passed through.”

The job in the bank and his four kids keep Joe busy but he still meets Con regularly.

Con is always at the end of the phone. He’s obviously a very busy man. But you ring Con, he’ll ring you back. Always the same words… ‘Everything ok?’

It’s grand Con, just ringing for a chat.

To bid on items at the Cáirde Chorcaí online auction at tonight’s Dr Con Murphy Tribute, visit galabid.com/cork. Cork Simon Community will share in the proceeds. Auction items include All-Ireland final tickets and historic GAA jerseys.