As Western Bulldogs captain Bob Murphy reaches the twilight of his illustrious career, his young team enjoys a stunning rise from a chaotic AFL off-season.
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When the final siren sounded last Saturday afternoon in Sydney, giving the Western Bulldogs a momentous four-point victory over Australian Football League Premiership hopefuls the Sydney Swans, ‘Dogs captain Bob Murphy was bursting with pride for his young team, saying afterwards it was one of the most memorable wins of his career.
The Bulldogs hail from Footscray, a working class suburb in Melbourne’s inner west, and their supporter base is still largely drawn from that part of the city. The club, which has had limited success – winning a solitary premiership in 1954 – since joining the League in 1925, prides itself on its blue-collar heritage. Bulldogs fans, like their players, are loyal and proud.
So proud of our club.
— Bob Murphy (@BobMurphy02) May 2, 2015
And so it is with Bob Murphy, a 32-year-old veteran of 16 seasons and 271 games, who is no ordinary footballer on or off the field. Roundly admired by football fans of all clubs, his slight build belies his rugged attack on the ball and undying passion for the contest – and those silky skills are always on display. Named in the 2011 All-Australian team, he is a resilient and versatile player equally adept in defense or attack. He is the kind of player most fans would want at their own club. But not Bob: it’s universally agreed he is, as the club song says, Bulldog through and through.
“It’s been home for half my life,” he said of the Whitten Oval in a recent documentary for Bulldogs TV. “It means everything to me.”
Murphy took over as captain at the beginning of the 2015 season after a tumultuous off-season during which coach Brendan McCartney quit, as did former skipper Ryan Griffen and two of their star playmakers in Shaun Higgins and Adam Cooney. The outlook for the season took a further battering when they lost 2014 Best-and-Fairest award winner Tom Liberatore to a long-term knee injury sustained during a pre-season game.
The son of a priest and a nun, Murphy walks to the beat of a different drum. In fact, it’s often his taste in music that comes into question among the younger generation of footballers. He counts Johnny Cash among his favourite musicians, once saying, “he’d have made a pretty decent footballer, ole Johnny. A spirited half-back flanker perhaps, someone who would ‘fight for his corner'”, as they say.”
Murphy also waxes poignantly and often humorously in a weekly column for The Age newspaper where an article about playing against mercurial Cats midfielder Steve Johnson earned him a highly commended prize in the 2012 Australian Football Media Association awards: Trick of the light or just another Stevie J trick?
Unusually for an elite sportsman in print, he has something to say. He’s neither an attention-seeking controversialist, nor is his copy plagued with platitudes and corporate rhetoric. His writing has a folky charm that is engaging and as readable, if not better than, many professional football writers. Below is an extract from the aforementioned article:
“With the game still in the balance but slipping out of our grasp, the ball flew out of a centre bounce with Stevie on the lead. It took everything I had to make a spoil, but the job wasn’t finished. He gathered the loose ball, spun, cut and danced his way out of trouble before firing off the obligatory no-look handball, my arms and legs flailing after him. Then he sidled up to me one last time and said, ”I usually save that stuff for (post-season) …’“
“My footy and my writing are pretty closely aligned,” Murphy told The Saturday Paper in April. “If there is a philosophy, it’s to put it all down, take a bit of a risk, and see what works.” Murphy often recounts in his column old stories of the 1954 Bulldogs flag and likens the next premiership – when it finally comes – to something akin to the Boston Red Sox breaking their drought.
He would love nothing more than to guide the Dogs towards that kind of success in his final years at the club. However, at the beginning of 2015, it appeared as if he would end his career leading his charges through some pretty dark days.
The chaos began during a peaceful family holiday in Bali, where Murphy recalls sitting by the pool, listening to some tunes, beer in hand, when he felt the uncharacteristic urge to check his email. With mobile phone reception poor, he was only able to read the first line, “Ryan Griffen’s management has informed us…”. He guessed the rest. In the following days, “Griff” publicly announced his departure to the Giants – the captain had walked away from his club.
Coach Brendan McCartney was gone soon after and key players Cooney and Higgins also joined the exodus.
Things were unraveling quickly at “The Kennel” and Murphy quickly realized it was time to put up his hand to lead. “The club just started getting kicked, and that’s when I got protective,” he told BulldogsTV. “As soon as the call was made, I was ready to step to the front line. I wanted to steady the ship and I thought I was the right person to do it. It was my time.”
Five weeks into the new season, and the Dogs, with Murphy and new coach Luke Beveridge at the helm, are playing some truly inspired football, currently sitting at 4-1 and third on the ladder. They are the Cinderella story of the 2015 season thus far, and with a favorable schedule for the remaining rounds, look every bit like post-season contenders.
“When you see a footy team sing the song the way we do, it’s almost like a mosh pit at the moment. We’re in a good place and we’re trying to keep it going,” Murphy told 3AW following the win over Sydney on the weekend.
But he is also very aware his time in the game is limited and precarious. “I’m looking over the edge of football oblivion,” he said on BulldogsTV. “The end is nigh. One missed step, one rolled ankle, one jarred landing and it could all be over. So I’m putting all my energy into just enjoying every bit of it.”
In past interviews, Murphy has often recounted a story of an old lady sidling up to him in a bookstore and whispering in his ear, “You’re not as interesting as you think you are.”
As amusing an anecdote as that is, I have to disagree with her summation. Murphy is a breath of fresh air, an oasis of thoughtfulness and wry humor in a desert of bland, media-shy sportsmen desperate not to say anything newsworthy, let alone controversial. I only hope he gets the opportunity to lead his young pups into a famous – and unexpected – post-season campaign this year before the light finally fades on what has been a most interesting career indeed.
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Photo Credit: Associated Press/File
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