Keith Murdoch
Member of the 1972 All Blacks team who became a recluse after being sent home following a brawl
KEITH MURDOCH, who has died aged 74, was the only All Black to have been sent home in disgrace from an overseas tour. In 1972 Murdoch punched a security guard during a brawl in a Cardiff hotel bar and was booted off the team. He never recovered from this humiliation, giving up rugby and spending the remaining 46 years of his life as a recluse. He avoided the media and his old friends, living a nomadic existence in the Outback and other remote parts of Australia and later New Zealand.
There were only a handful of recorded public sightings of him in those decades. In the late-1970s Terry Maclean, New Zealand’s leading rugby writer, tracked him down to an oil-drilling site outside Perth. A spanner-wielding Murdoch told Maclean to get back on the bus, which he prudently did.
In 1980 he was mentioned in newspapers for saving the life of a boy in a swimming pool, but he refused to talk about it.
The following decade a part-time journalist called Margot Mcrae came across him in a pub in Tully, Queensland. He bought her a beer, but refused to be interviewed, saying: “This isn’t a story, this is my life.” She developed this brief encounter into a play, Finding Murdoch, which was staged in New Zealand.
In 2001 Murdoch appeared in court at Tennant Creek in Northern Territory in connection with the death of Kumanjai Limerick, an Aborigine whom he had caught breaking into his home and who was later found dead in an abandoned mine. Although the coroner voiced a theory that Murdoch and some friends might have been taking vengeance, no evidence was ever produced.
Since then, no further sightings of Murdoch have been recorded. The mystery of his disappearance – and the luxuriant black moustache he sported as a player – led to him being described as Lord Lucan of the Antipodes.
Keith Murdoch was born at Dunedin, New Zealand, on September 9 1943 and educated at King Edward Technical College. He played for Otago, Hawke’s Bay and Auckland before winning 27 caps for the All Blacks as a barrel-chested prop forward, starting with a tour of South Africa in 1970.
He had a reputation as a “larrikin”, enjoying a drink and often getting into fights. The incident that changed his life occurred on December 2 1972 after he had scored a try in a 19-16 All Black victory over a Welsh team containing players such as JPR Williams, Phil Bennett, Gareth Edwards and Mervyn Davies.
When the bar was closed at the Angel Hotel, opposite Cardiff Arms Park, Murdoch tried to get some more beer from the kitchen, but a security guard called Peter Grant blocked his way. Murdoch knocked him down, giving him a black eye. He also hit an official who was trying to restrain him.
When the press got hold of the story, there was pressure on Eddie Todd, the tour manager, to take serious action. Todd’s wife said later that her husband regretted his decision to send Murdoch home.
Some of the players wanted to stage a walkout in protest, but Murdoch told them not to. Had they threatened to abandon the tour, Murdoch would probably have been given a lesser punishment.
He was smuggled on to a flight to New Zealand and the media were waiting for him at Auckland airport. But he had got off at Darwin and gone into the Outback, where he began his self-imposed exile.
Many of his team-mates have felt guilty ever since about their failure to stand up for Murdoch, including Ian Kirkpatrick, the captain. For the next 40 years, whenever the All Blacks were playing in Wales, the team would go to the Angel Hotel and drink a toast to their lost player. A place was reserved for him at reunions, but in 2012 they finally accepted that he was never going to turn up.
Keith Murdoch was not known to have married or to have had any children.
Keith Murdoch, born September 9 1943, died March 30 2018