MEMOIR:The Outsider, By Geordan Murphy with Gavin Cummiskey, Penguin Ireland, 272pp. £18.99
THIS IS a book that I very much wanted to read. Brian O’Driscoll, Ronan O’Gara and Geordan Murphy were the three outstanding talents on the Ireland rugby team over the past 15 years. When the history of the golden era is written, O’Driscoll and O’Gara will be headliners but, sadly, Murphy will be merely a footnote.
In The Outsider, Murphy attempts to explain his lack of recognition despite winning 74 caps for his country. His career does demonstrate that there is no shortage of talent in Irish rugby but there may be a shortage of talent that recognises talent. Yet this book will not elicit him much sympathy, as he comes across as bitter and self-centred. He was a poor student at school and clearly does not remember his Julius Caesar: “The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, but in ourselves, that we are underlings.” For Murphy, it is always somebody else that is responsible for his problems.
Books of this kind are generally written based on a series of interviews with the subject, and merged into a coherent story. In this case, it seems as if every interview became a chapter and that these were then stapled together to make a book, without any regard for chronology.
Everybody knows that sportspeople are not writers, so they are comfortable with the idea of a journalist writing the book as long as the voice and character of the subject shine through. This was most memorably achieved by Vincent Hogan in his association with the notably reticent and near-monosyllabic Paul McGrath. In this book, Murphy’s thoughts are reproduced verbatim without making the book a read. Nobody expects a John Grisham page-turner, but engagement with the reader is a prerequisite.
I learned four things about Murphy in this book. His name is George, not Geordan; he goes to Mass; he is a complete mess with women; and, incredibly, he kicked away the Grand Slam ball in Cardiff. However, this book does not reveal anything of substance about the man.
The change of name was interesting, happening after a nurse came to the house with news of George. His mother, the wife of a serving army officer, was briefly in shock until she realised that the baby George, not the father, was the purpose of the visit. She resolved to change her offspring’s name so there would never again be confusion. Thus it was Geordan, the Scots Gaelic for George, ever more. With three George Hooks in my family, I have some sympathy for Mrs Murphy.
There is a real sense that Geordan Murphy is close to his family, yet we learn little or nothing about them. His mother is mentioned in the first 11 pages and does not reappear for another 200, when we discover that her name is Cecily. Similarly, dad is barely mentioned and there is no indication of what kind of father-son relationship existed. Despite having four brothers and a sister, Murphy is largely silent about his family. It is a notable omission in a book in which we struggle to know the man behind the headlines. It will be interesting to see how Frank O’Driscoll and Fergal O’Gara are treated when their sons come to write their stories.
Given his self-confessed inability with women it is not surprising that just two girlfriends make the cut. He asked Lucie (none of the women merits a surname) to marry him at a pop concert in Amsterdam, but they broke up five months before the planned wedding day. His current companion, Anneka, gets more mentions, but again we are in the dark as to the relationship.
Murphy is clearly a very private man and, unlike many of his team-mates, was not at every bunfight with a pretty girl draped on his arm. He consciously did not go to music events with Lucie, an aspiring pop singer, lest their picture appear in the glossies.
With few personal vignettes detailed in the book, it becomes a repetition of rugby matches and a tale of a difficult relationship with Ireland rugby coaches.
The big failure of the book is that it is a chronological mess. On page 58 Murphy is heading to New Zealand for the World Cup and on the following page he is in Leicester in 1998, contemplating declaring for England. The story jumps from year to year, and World Cups are not in sequence; Declan Kidney comes before Eddie O’Sullivan; and Ireland games merge with Premiership games at bewildering speed.
And why oh why do rugby players insist on using nicknames in schoolboy locker-room style? The uninitiated may get Drico and Darce, but Fla and Donners may prove a test. Geordan’s voice comes through in this book when he talks rugby, but there is too much detail on complex moves, skip passes and sidesteps. There is, however, a common thread: with few exceptions the author has played a blinder in every match since he was 13. To succeed, this book needed wider audience appeal.
Murphy talks of meeting Jim Glennon in 2001 to discuss returning to Ireland and Leinster. The story may be true, but the date is almost certainly wrong as at that point Glennon was not in charge at Leinster.
However, what the story does demonstrate is that Murphy was badly paid at Leicester. As the fullback on the Heineken Cup-winning team he was on a salary of £21,000 at a time when the Irish players were earning as much as four times that amount. Later Dean Richards, whose bullying tactics were exposed in “Bloodgate” at Harlequins, cut Murphy’s wages in half until he gained weight. That should not have been allowed to happen.
However, nowhere in this book is there mention of an agent, an adviser or a mentor, with the exception of Kevin West, who recommended Murphy to Leicester. There is an overwhelming sense that Murphy was not well-advised during his career and that his position as an outsider was much of his own making.
The Irish Rugby Football Union is not blameless in this saga. It made, as the Glennon story suggests, little or no effort to lure Murphy back to Ireland when the provinces were hardly awash with quality fullbacks. He may have suffered for his ability to play in different positions but, as Isa Nacewa demonstrated on a weekly basis for Leinster, this was hardly a drawback.
Despite its many flaws the book will sell because of the author’s well-publicised criticism of Eddie O’Sullivan. For those familiar with O’Sullivan’s tenure at Ireland, the sentiments ring true, but there is a meanness to the attacks that lessen Murphy’s stature. Witness this remark: “Eddie was down among us as we rounded the south terrace, arm in arm with his captain, just in case anybody had any doubt about whose team it was.”
However, the book should be read as Lady Chatterley’s Lover was in the 1960s: scroll through for the dirty bits.
George Hook is a rugby analyst with RTÉ and presenter of The Right Hook on Newstalk
