Spurs boss is one of Murphy’s mob
Last week’s Doc Replies mentioned a condition called “clay shoveler’s fracture”. Now who on earth were clay shovelers? – M.
Clay shovelling was a job in 1930s Australia, where hardy souls were employed to dig deep ditches through heavy clay soil.
Using shovels with very long handles, they would toss the clay 10-15ft above their heads. Sometimes the clay would stick to the shovel, putting strain on the men’s necks, fracturing a vertebrae.
Ihave a mate who is a real Tottenham Hotspur fan, and I mean he really know as all about the club.
In fact, he just told me that the manager, Mauricio Pochettino, was born in a town called Murphy, even though its seems a strange name for a place in Argentina.
If it’s true, I would like to know a little more about the Argentine town with an Irish name, Queries Man – M.
The current Spurs boss was indeed born in Murphy, a small town with a population of just 3,500 in Argentina’s Santa Fe province, about 250 miles west of the capital, Buenos Aires.
Not surprisingly, Murphy was founded by an Irishman, John James Murphy.
Murphy was born in Ireland’s County Kildare in 1822 but at the age of 22, he boarded a ship bound for South America, in search of his fortune.
Arriving in Buenos Aires after a three-month voyage, he found a job digging ditches, but soon gave it up in favour of farming.
The pampas, the flat grassland area in the heart of Argentina, was ideal for sheep farming and the establishment of a wool industry.
European breeds of sheep were imported and crossed with hardier native stock and the industry took off in a big way.
At the time of his death, in 1909, he owned 40,000 hectares of land.
And Pochettino isn’t the only footballer to come from the town, as Spurs’ third-choice keeper, Paulo Gazziniga, also hails from Murphy. Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, Peter Lawford, Sammy Davis Jr and Joey Bishop were known as The Rat Pack. Who first called them that – it’s hardly a compliment, after all.
The five were famously known as The Rat Pack in the 1960s, but the term was coined a decade earlier.
Lauren Bacall used it to describe husband, Humphrey Bogart, and his drinking buddies, including Sinatra.