Hamish McLachlan: What you didn’t know about Western Bulldogs captain Bob Murphy

HE’S slight, but fierce - and Western Bulldogs captain Robert Murphy is one of the most fascinating footballers around, writes Hamish McLachlan.

Rob Murphy

I’VE always admired Bob Murphy as a player. Slight, but fierce. He may also just be the most interesting footballer I’ve ever met.

He talks about his football mortality, trains, the Gallagher brothers, tattoos, Bruce Springsteen, bull elephants, life’s rules, black boots, pre-game shakes and the dream of a Bulldogs flag.

HM: Your father was a priest and your mother was a nun, amazing you’re even here.

BM: Agreed — but thankfully true love was involved — son of a preacher man — as Dusty Springfield sang. Why am I here though? That’s another question.

HM: In an earthly sense or a football sense?

BM: I probably don’t think about why in an earthly sense too much at the moment, more about my football purpose. I’ve got some good years left in life, I hope, but my football life is different. How long have I got left here, and what can I do? I am trying to cram as much in as I can until the inevitable tap on the shoulder comes.

HM: There is a risk that you finish your career, and you don’t achieve what you set out to do.

BM: I think I’ve faced that in some ways, but also you save a little bit of room for it, if it doesn’t work out. I’ve got this theory — the premiership is what it’s all about — but it also can’t be what it’s all about. I think if that’s the whole thing, if you tell me that Chris Grant’s career doesn’t mean anything, and John Schultz’s career doesn’t mean anything, you’re not the kind of person I would like to sit next to at a dinner party. There is an element of a hole inside you, and if a flag never happens that hole will be there forever, but that’s just part of growing up. If you get everything you want you’ll probably turn into a p---- anyway.

 

HM: Is there a difference between a 250-game player and a 250-game premiership player?

BM: There’s a chasm. Premiership players are a bit like bull elephants — the ones who get prime position at the waterhole. All the animals will be drinking, and when the bull elephant comes over the hill, all the other elephants, without any communication, just move to the side to allow the bull elephant to drink. And that’s happening at bars and pubs all around Australia. Steve Kernahan and Jonathan Brown, they are the bull elephants of the bull elephants. They walk up to the bar and the rest of us just take a step to the left.

 

HM: When you think about a Western Bulldogs flag, what do you think of?

BM: I think of the Boston Red Sox breaking their drought. When I watched the story on ESPN 30 for 30, I thought about the Bulldogs in ’54. I daydream and although it’s painful, it’s vivid. I can see the faces that mean so much in the crowd, the Auskick kid presenting the medallion to me, the rooms after the match, the walk to the Footscray town hall. It’s probably much more dramatic in my imagination. I hear that in 1954, three players couldn’t get into the hall because there were so many people, so they stayed on the couch and drank bottles of beer. That’s all in the dream.

Robert Murphy leads the Bulldogs out for the first time as captain. Picture: Michael Klein

HM: New coach, new captain, CEO gone. To borrow a line from Ron Burgundy, “that escalated quickly!”

BM: That really got out of hand didn’t it! The last six months has been world-changing for all of us at the club. Personally, there were probably loose plans in my head that this might be the last year, and I’d just sort of drift off, but I don’t feel like that now. It still might be my last year — I don’t know if re-energised is the right way to put it — but we’re all hungry.

 

HM: Your old man was a huge influence over you. What were his three pearls of wisdom regarding football?

BM: Kick with both feet, hold on to your chest marks and find a man.

 

HM: Does he still give advice?

BM: No, we don’t really talk about the detail of footy too much — he just likes to check in with “how it feels”. He always asks how the feeling at the club is. The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree, and I’m a pretty touchy feely kind of guy. I’m much more interested in the feel of things. At school I dreaded science, you had to have the answer, and it had to be precise. Get me in the art department, I’m much more comfortable with that. I think it was pretty good advice. If any of my kids take it up, that’d be my advice. My first coach was “kick it in the open places and be prepared to run”. I have a shocking memory. I can’t remember to take the bins out, where my wallet or keys are, but things like that just stay there.

 

HM: My second footy coach said “If you drop a chest mark, you’ve had a bad season.”

BM: That’s so good! That belongs on a T-shirt or something.

HM: Has being a father helped your footy?

BM: I remember when we started ... the days of being at the bottom of the ladder and you’d get pumped. You’d go home and feel horrific, in your marrow and your soul. I remember the guys with kids saying that when they got home, the feeling would just wash away. I remember thinking, “What a load of crap.” Now, while I wouldn’t say it washes away, it splits you in two and leaves you more balanced. The kids don’t really care how the Bulldogs do, they just want to watch the Lion King. Footy life can be unbalanced if you’re not careful, and I credit family with that, definitely, because it takes so much of your heart, your head, your time. Kids provide perspective.

 

HM: Given how analysed players are now, is there a risk those who aren’t mentally strong enough are affected by the criticism?

BM: That was the thing I found the hardest when I started, and that was another world to what it is now. How forensically the game is reviewed now, internally and by the media and fans, is frightening. I found it tough when I started, so I do worry about the guys coming into it now. It’s really intense. I’ve often wondered why, when a guy finished his career, he’d go and play a year of country footy. I think they look for that last moment of pure joy that they used to get from the game. I think if you’re not careful, at the highest level of anything, you are in danger of losing that because the moments are looked over, and lost in the analysis.

 

HM: Do you suddenly have self doubt before your first game?

BM: You line up for your first game and you feel like you’ve never played. Before your first game the voice in your head gets very loud. That bloke in your head is a p----; you wouldn’t sit next to him at a dinner party. I can’t speak for others but there has got to be a bit of self-belief to play AFL, but until you’ve done it, you don’t know if you can cut the mustard. There are plenty of good VFL players who couldn’t go the next step. I loved that my first game was at Optus Oval, because I was born and raised in the ’80s, watched footy in the ’90s. I think footy in the ’90s was the best the game looked. Great players, jumpers still had collars, suburban games. My first game was like I was watching Winners on a Saturday night, and just walked into the TV and started playing with the guys on the screen.

Western Bulldogs veteran Robert Murphy played his 250th game against West Coast in March 2014. Picture: Colleen Petch.

HM: Was there a player who gave you hope that a boy from Warragul could go on to play 250 games?

BM: Trent Hotton. His mum and my mum worked at the high school. He got drafted to Collingwood and I knew him, he was older than me, but I knew him. So my heroes were Michael Jordan — and Trent Hotton. I had been to his house, and now he was on the telly! He proved it could be done and that kind of lifted the horizon a little bit. I just assumed I’d be able to do it after Trent did, which is so naive. Maybe that’s not so bad, sometimes naivety gets a bad rap.

 

HM: What’s the best sledge in your football odyssey?

BM: I do shift in my seat a bit when I get asked this question because AFL sledging is so pedestrian. It’s not like cricket, which gives a sledge time to marinate. Stevie J has sledging game though. There’s probably a book that could be written on his sledges. We were playing on each other on a Friday night, and I spoiled him, the ball went to ground, and he gathered the ball again, and as I tried to tackle him, he spun around, handballed it over his head to a running teammate, who goaled. As I picked myself up, he said to me, “I usually save that stuff for finals”. Then later in the game, after he had locked in the three votes, he said quietly, “I’ve almost half run this flu out.” How good is that?

 

HM: Did you get sledged in a Carlton bookstore once?

BM: I did. A woman sidled up to me. I didn’t know she was there, she just whispered in my ear, “You’re not as interesting as you think you are,” which I don’t need to tell you, for a columnist, is like columnist kryptonite.

 

HM: Did you get her name?

BM: Nope, she walked off and left me reeling … but I have continued to write about myself for another six years.

I showed her.

Sky high against Swan Rhyce Shaw.

Bob Murphy back in 2001.

HM: Do you drive your car on empty a lot?

BM: I used to, I’ve kind of stopped. It’s one of the world’s great sports — should be in the Olympics — Ben Hudson and I really bonded over it. The spectrum of the sport is best summarised by the time Ben and I were in the car and it ran out under a bridge in Seddon. Huddo and I cheered; it was like we’d won something. It can’t get better than that in the sport, ring a mate, bring a jerry can. When my wife Justine and the kids and I ran out just past the West Gate Bridge in Seddon, it was very different. Silence.

 

HM: Why do you love trains?

BM: I like things that look old, and they’re going somewhere. It’s good to be moving.

 

HM: Black boots, you’re in the minority.

BM: We’ve lost the war on that one. We’re getting smacked … there’s hope though.

HM: It’s you and Nat Fyfe, basically.

BM: That’s good enough for me, any time you can align me with Nat Fyfe, that’s all right. Jackson Macrae, who I love, is his own man. We had a training camp to Mooloolaba and he came out with boots that can only be described as hot pink. And he called them something like “plasma red”. God help us all.

 

HM: To shake an opponent’s hand pre-game, or not to shake?

BM: We’ve almost lost that too. There are embers, hoping for a roaring inferno, but just embers currently. The post-game shake is going strong, going on in leaps and bounds. The pre-game shake though, is on fragile ground.

 

HM: Ever had a shake refused?

BM: No. I’ve had a shake accepted and an elbow in the back.

 

HM: Could you get a team-wide pre-game shake? Could that be your legacy?

BM: I will put it to the voters.

 

HM: You’re waiting to get into a lift, and two doors open at once. Bruce Springsteen is in one, the Gallagher brothers in the other. Which do you choose?

BM: Tough one. I’d love to have a chat with Bruce. Liam’s a pretty scary customer. Probably Bruce, I think we’d get along OK. I’d probably get in a blue with the Gallaghers. Having an hour-long chat with Bruce would be phenomenal — but so would asking Liam and Noel for an autograph and them just telling me to p--- off!

 

HM: You have a tattoo of Elvis on your left breast — are you disappointed it looks more like Paul Roos than the King?

BM: I’m disappointed some people think that. Paul Roos has actually seen it! Ben Hudson made me show him at Canberra airport. I think he was chuffed. Then I saw Paul Roos again the other week, and we shared a glance.

Hamish McLachlan chats with Bob Murphy. Picture: Jason Edwards

HM: Seinfeld has three simple rules on life, do you?

BM: I actually have Jerry’s in my locker — work your arse off, fall in love, pay attention. Add kick with both feet, hold your chest marks, and find the man, and there’s six pretty good life rules. They are a metaphor for greater life aren’t they? Work your arse off — only good things can come of that. Fall in love. If you’re lucky enough to find the love of your life, that’s one thing, but also fall in love with the game and what you do, the people you do it with, and try to find the love in the hard things as well. And pay attention. That’s probably the most important one I reckon, especially for people starting out in the game. Maybe I should hand them out to the draftees? “Guys, I know I waffle on, but here’s life’s rules.”

HM: As far as I can gather you’ve never really had a job in your life? What do you think you’ll do when you grow up?

BM: I’m going for the record for the latest start date of employment. What’s that line? Find something you love and you’ll never work a day in your life.

HM: Do you feel like you’ve never worked a day in your life?

BM: Yep, in a fortunate sense, not in a lazy sense. There’s been no drudgery with it, repetition but not drudgery. I’ve been lucky in that way.

HM: If I could place you in one football moment, where would you be?

BM: In the race for the 1954 Grand Final, that’d be enough.

HM: How many grand finals have you played in?

BM: Ten, if you count the NAB Cup.

HM: I really hope you get to play in another.

BM: Thanks mate.