Rugby is making great strides with introducing former players onto their refereeing and match officials roster.
While Alain Rolland seemed the fly a solo flag for players-turned refs, in recent years, the rapid ascents of Joy Neville and Frank Murphy are two more Irish success stories.
Neville was a stalwart of the Ireland Women’s side and Murphy plied his rugby trade with the likes of Leicester Tigers and Connacht before retiring in 2014. Both Neville and Murphy got their match official qualifications and did well on the club rugby scene before making the step-up to the club scene. Both are flying it.
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Murphy is good friends with Mike McCarthy, his old Connacht teammate, and the former Ireland international shared a lovely story about him on The Hard Yards [from 1:10:00 below]. All we can say is it was lucky this was not before a competitive fixture.
“My new, favourite referee is Frank Murphy,” said McCarthy. “I didn’t have too many games under him, which he was probably delighted about.
“Frank was actually best man at my wedding so I’m pretty tight with him.
“For pre-season, last year, we were playing Bath at Donnybrook and it was sort of his first big game. I was trying to WhatsApp him before – saying ‘Bath do this, and this’ and that I wanted to make sure he reffed the game properly.
“He didn’t even write back to me. It was obviously one of his first big games and he was probably pretty nervous about it. I think he was worried that I was going to be acting the maggot during the game and saying stupid things to him.
“To be honest, I hadn’t played in six months as I was just coming back after that concussion [sustained in Paris against France]. I was struggling for oxygen so I didn’t say a word to him all game.”
A bullet dodged for Murphy and his former teammate is delighted to see he is getting some Challenge Cup games to oversee after doing so well in the Guinness PRO14.
The pre-match conversation reminds us of Stephen Ferris chirping up to the referee before an interprovincial game, early in his career, between Munster and Ulster. In Man and Ball, Ferris recalled his brief chat with Rolland ahead of the game at Musgrave Park:
“‘See Alan Quinlan’, I said, ‘I’ve been watching him all week. At the breakdown he has been doing this, that and the other’.”
Rolland turned around. ‘Stephen, just you concentrate on your own game. I’ll deal with everything else. Zip.’
He mimed zipping his lips and walked off. I never said anything to a referee ever again.
Proper order!
