What preceded the ultimate sending off?
Dunedin author Ron Palenski has written a book on former All Black and Otago prop Keith Murdoch. In this edited extract from the book, the incident central to his dismissal from the All Black tour is explained.
KEITH Murdoch began the last hours of his rugby life safe in the knowledge he had scored an important try which helped New Zealand edge Wales 1916 at a packed Arms Park. The formal test dinner following the test was at the
Angel and as the players were milling about, waiting to enter the dining room, Murdoch stood in a small group that included Ernie Todd and one of the heroes of the afternoon, Joe Karam. [All Black manager Ernie] Todd noticed that Murdoch’s blazer pocket had lost some of its stitching and was in danger of falling off.
Karam recalls Todd saying: ‘‘Take it off Keith or you’ll lose it. I’ll get it put back on properly next week. So Murdoch, with Karam and Todd as witnesses, ripped the pocket off and gave it to Todd.
That simple little episode lays to rest a couple of stories which were circulated after photos of Murdoch appeared ‘‘badgeless’’ in his blazer. One theory was he was ceremoniously stripped of the badge like a 19thcentury soldier being drummed out of the army; the other was Murdoch, shamed, angry or both, tore it off after Todd told him to pack up.
Murdoch went into the test dinner, therefore, without the silver fern on his blazer.
The dinner was something of a sanctuary. The reports about Murdoch’s movements after the dinner are hazy and contradictory. There is no point now going through the range of reported sightings because they vary about place and time.
Police and justice officials are well used to witnesses of one single event having quite different recollections. Remembering is not an exact science.
It is known he was briefly at the dance and it’s known he was in the team room, where he happily took over the role he enjoyed, that of barman, ensuring his teammates and their guests had the drinks they wanted and were otherwise content with their lot.
The Auckland Star reporter, Roy Williams, and his wife, Ngaire, were with Lin Colling and Duncan Hales in the foyer and joined Murdoch, photographer Peter Bush and a couple of All Blacks for a drink.
‘‘Keith couldn’t have been happier,’’ Williams wrote.
At some point, around one o’clock or so, Murdoch headed for the hotel kitchen. Again, there were differing reports about the location, but kitchen seemed to be the consensus. There was also agreement, both at the time and later, that Murdoch was not drunk. A phrase such as ‘‘drunken rampage’’ had its origins in Fleet Street, not in the Angel.
It seems likely that one of the security guards, Peter Grant, confronted Murdoch and attempted to stop him from whatever he intended to do. An argument ensued, other guards appeared. Murdoch punched Grant on the side of the head and Grant staggered away, holding his head. On following days, his black eye became a badge of outrage as he wallowed in his 15 minutes of fame.
Todd had, by his own account, been called away from another area of the hotel by one of the All Blacks, Lin Colling. ‘‘You gotta come down below, Keith’s in trouble.’’
Accounts vary about whether Murdoch hit Grant before Todd’s arrival or after. There were also reports that Murdoch hit Todd as well, but Todd denied that, and noone took them very seriously. Todd at some stage, worked up as he was, in effect told Murdoch that this was the end of the road. Murdoch’s tour was over.
Murdoch was ushered back upstairs. One of the players closest to Murdoch, Lin Colling, told John Brooks, the Christchurch journalist who covered the tour for the New Zealand Press Association, he tended a cut on a Murdoch finger, the two of them had a beer and Murdoch curled up in Colling’s bed. Colling himself went to Ian Kirkpatrick’s room.
A s far as can be determined, no journalists saw any of this. Their knowledge of events was therefore secondhand at best and they had to rely on what they were told. [Journalist T.P.] McLean said he was told by Graham Whiting, the All Black prop and one particularly close to Murdoch, that Todd had told him he had to go home.
McLean in the morning paced around the foyer, waiting for Todd to return from Mass, and when he saw him, pounced and asked: Is there any truth in the report that you may send Murdoch home? Todd replied: ‘‘Too bloody right there is.’’
Being a sharp operator, McLean then put words into Todd’s mouth and asked him if he was contemplating the severest disciplinary action against Murdoch. ‘‘Yes’’ was the reply quoted.
McLean scuttled off to phone his office, knowing he’d just catch the Monday morning paper and that The [New Zealand] Herald would send his story on to the Otago Daily Times in Murdoch’s home town.
Reading the paper at her home in Ravensbourne that morning would have been the first Ellen Murdoch learnt that her son was in trouble. She would have been saddened, perplexed, worried. And she would not have been the only one. In Cardiff, chaos and confusion seemed to take over. There was a meeting between the senior cadre of the All Blacks: Todd and Duff, captain Ian Kirkpatrick and vicecaptain Sid Going. There was agreement that Murdoch would not be sent home. Kirkpatrick recalled being emphatic: ‘‘No way he’s going home — we’ll settle this inhouse.’’
The team went to Birmingham later and that night, Todd called the journalists together. He told them:
‘‘An incident in Cardiff involving one of our players has been investigated and appropriate disciplinary action has been taken.’’ Further than that, he would not be drawn. He also said he would write letters of apology to Grant, the hotel and to the Welsh union.
Todd that night went out to dinner and All Blacks coach Bob Duff therefore was the senior man to take the call when the chairman of the New Zealand union, Jack Sullivan, called.
‘‘He said he understood we had some trouble on our hands,’’ Duff recalled.
‘‘I replied that it was nothing we couldn’t handle.’’
In the meantime, Duff had decided who he wanted to play in the midweek match in Birmingham; the players were told the team, then Todd made it public. Murdoch was in it. The selection in the circumstances seemed then, and still does 45 years later, to be extraordinarily unthinking. McLean reported that Albert Agar, the pipesmoking banker who was secretary of the Four Home Unions, was amazed.
Asked why Murdoch was chosen, Todd said: ‘‘We are playing him because we need him.’’
It can be confidently assumed that the British officials would have conferred yet again, would have urged their views on Todd yet again, and that John Tallent [chairman of the Four Home Unions tour committee] would, yet again, have got on the phone to Wellington.
I t is possible that the naming of Murdoch in the very next team while he was being given ‘‘appropriate disciplinary action’’ led directly to the decision to expel him.
Had things been allowed to cool down, had Murdoch sat out a match or two — even with an invented injury — tension might have dissipated and the crisis been eased into the background.
But his selection was provocative, even inflammatory, and probably forced the British hand. Duff was adamant that the two incidents, the Angel and the selection, were unrelated. He said he chose Murdoch for no reason other than he was needed for the team. But it would have been the last straw for Tallent who told Sullivan that if
Murdoch was not sent home, the tour was in jeopardy; if Murdoch was not sent home, they would want the manager replaced.
None of this was made public at the time. The public comments from Tallent and Sullivan were bland in the extreme.
Todd had called Duff to his room at about eight o’clock on the Monday morning. He said he had given further thought to the matter and had decided to send Murdoch home. ‘‘It came as a bombshell to me; there had been no real thought of banishing him. We thought the dust had settled.’’
Not long after, Murdoch made his famous comment, ‘‘Hooray boys, I’m off’’ (if he didn’t say it, it would have been a nice comment anyway) and the rugby world wondered yet again what on earth was going on.
Murdoch made his comment as the other players waited in the bus to go to training. They were told what was going on and were given the chance to have a few minutes with Murdoch in his room to say their goodbyes. Most of them took the chance to farewell a mate. It was a sad, cruel time for them.
T his was the one chance Ian Kirkpatrick forever wished he had taken: if he goes, we all go. It was a threat unvoiced, an ultimatum undelivered because of the emotion and speed of events. It was a thought unspoken and echoed by several players over the years.
The bus left in one direction and Murdoch in another, with Stanley Couchman, the Rugby Football Union liaison man with the team, as a guide and minder. Todd called a press conference.
‘‘I’ve called this conference to give you the news that Keith Murdoch is returning home,’’ he began. ‘‘I made this decision, really, for the benefit of the player himself and of the team as a whole. It was not an easy decision to make but I think these are the managerial responsibilities I must face up to.’’
Todd was adamant that it was his decision alone — it would eventually come out that it was not; he was forced into it — and he added something of a bizarre note when he was asked how Murdoch had taken his dismissal. ‘‘Keith Murdoch took the decision like the wonderful man he is . . . Noone asked the obvious rejoinder, Well, if he’s such a wonderful man, and most of his teammates will say he is, why is he being branded a disgrace and being sent home?
Murdoch and Couchman left Birmingham by train and after a shade over two hours, arrived at London’s Euston Station, where journalists and photographers lay in wait. Murdoch wore the blazer from which he had ripped the monogram pocket before the test dinner and carried his bags. Most reports said he said nothing and looked neither left nor right.
Terry O’Connor, of the Daily Mail, was among the journalists at Euston Station. It was he who had said two months before that ‘‘the wild man’’ was coming when the team was selected and he farewelled Murdoch with a piece in similar vein, saying ‘‘bad man Murdoch’’ should never have been selected, and he included a nastily gratuitous comment.
It was indicative of the intense Fleet Street interest in the story that one of the reporters dispatched in a hurry to the station asked another who was already waiting: ‘‘There could be a lot of people on this train. How will we recognise him?
Reports differ about where the pair went next. Couchman delivered his charge to Heathrow and must have pulled a few strings to get Murdoch whisked through as a VIP and on to the Qantas Boeing 747 without either the airport news agency, or other waiting journalists, seeing him until it was too late. People complained but Murdoch would not have cared. He was on QF744 bound for Sydney, via Frankfurt and Singapore. His tour and his rugby days were over.
Abridged extract from
Aby Ron Palenski ($39.99 RRP), Upstart Press (http://upstartpress.co.nz/ murdochtheallblackwhoneverreturned/)