The Big Interview: Grit, guts and a Grand Slam from Kildare rugby star Jenny Murphy

Jenny Murphy was walking across her university campus at 7am to head to the library when she spotted what would come to be her future. The St Mary’s University rugby team slugging it out at the crack of dawn on an especially dreary morning in Twickenham. Was it love at first sight for the future Grand Slam winner? Not quite.

“It looked absolutely rotten, they were covered in muck, it was so early but despite all that, I wanted to give it a go,” she said.

“I went to one training session in the evening that same week and just absolutely fell in love with it. All of the attributes that had sometimes gone against me playing Gaelic football were welcomed and embraced in rugby. I could be physically dominant and it was encouraged.”

There aren’t many people who find the sport they were destined for at 19. The sad reality is that most have dropped out of their favourite sport by then. But the time was now for Ballymore Eustace native Jenny and just as quickly as she fell in love with rugby, her potential began to show.

“Early on I wanted to play as much as possible so I just joined the nearest club to me and on the first day I was there we played a match. Afterwards the coach and the referee came up to me and said that I can’t play in this league again, it was a waste. The referee had played for Richmond, the top premiership team in England at the time, so she sent me there and it has all kind of just snowballed since.”

Jenny Murphy lining out for Leinster, pictured in September 2021 before the Vodafone Women’s Interprovincial Championship Round 3 match between Leinster and Munster at Energia Park in Dublin. PICTURE: Harry Murphy/Sportsfile

After a year of learning the finer details of the sport, Jenny was learning to harness her physical attributes and combine them with the necessary finesse. Around this time, she was drafted into a talent identification squad for players who were Irish or eligible for Ireland but living abroad. The talent squad would fly home and do a training session with a wider Irish squad that would be narrowed down.

That opportunity came and went for Jenny as the squad was reduced, but there would still be plenty of time for another run-in with the national side before they began their Six Nations campaign.

‘Brutal stuff’

“They gathered the rest of us that were not selected to play a match against Ireland for their warm-ups in 2012. I was one of the ‘body bags’ that flew over and we got absolutely hockeyed. It was only my second game playing in the backs, full back, so one of my coaches had to stand behind the goalposts and direct me ‘go right, go left’. It was brutal stuff,” Jenny explained.

“I knocked out an Irish player with a tackle, Nikki Caughey. Throughout I was just hoping I could get to one of these camps properly one day. I flew home then and went back to working in a bar in Twickenham.”

Jenny’s next contact from the Irish camp would be a nerve-racking one — the phone in her pocket lights up with the name of Irish coach Gemma Crowley. Her mind immediately races to the medical bills of Nikki Caughey, a cost she could ill afford while trying to make ends meet in college.

“I was certain it was about Nikki but when I calmed down Gemma explained that I had been called up for the next round of Six Nations camps. It was one of the last weeks of training, I came in really late and I was still really rough around the edges.”

The last few weeks of training were rigorous and featured double sessions on both Saturday and Sunday. It was the man affectionately known as ‘Goose’, head coach at the time Philip Doyle’s turn to break the news to the players who didn’t make the final cut.

“After the first session Sunday, Goose would pull you aside and say why you weren’t getting selected,” she said.

“I was absolutely gutted, I can still remember sitting on that giant leather couch and not knowing how much I wanted it until it was taken away.”

There was another injury in the Irish squad that day but this time Jenny was confident she hadn’t injured Ireland’s no 10 when Gemma Crowley called again.

“I had flown back to the UK, got a call from Gemma and I was like ‘listen, I didn’t injure anybody this time, I wasn’t near her when that happened’,” Jenny laughed.

“Next thing I hear, ‘congratulations, you have been selected for the 2012 Six Nations squad’. I was in the bar working and I dropped some old lady’s gin and tonic all over the floor. It was a really special moment, I’m still to this day, very grateful for that opportunity.”

There are many cliches that could be used here but none put it more simply than from there she never looked back.

But before the roaring success of the Grand Slam win in 2013, there was plenty of work to do on the field for the new Irish squad member. None more so than soaking up the wealth of knowledge from her experienced teammates. Among the many incredible squad members, one stood out as a mentor and coach for Jenny in those early years.

“So many of the girls were incredibly generous with their time and I remember Grace Davitt in particular because we were rooming together. She would spend hours of extra time helping me go over moves, she was a senior player and it was maybe to the detriment of herself. The more I improved, it became difficult for Goose to pick between us on match day,” she explained.

Ireland players Ailis Egan, Nora Stapleton, Marie Louise Reilly, Fiona Coghlan and Jenny Murphy celebrate winning the Grand Slam after the final whistle in their match against Italy in Milan in March 2013. Picture: Matt Browne / SPORTSFILE

“I always thought of that and one day I asked her about it, and she said ‘if you’re better than me, you are better for the team and that’s what needs to be done’. That is something you take for granted because that’s the way things should be, but in reality it’s not the case in most teams.”

When you hear the description of the level of support for one another in the Irish squad at that time you see a crucial element of why they were so successful. The positive outcomes of this began with Ireland’s first ever Women’s Six Nations win in 2013 and did it in style too as the girls in green secured the Triple Crown and Grand Slam titles.

It wasn’t just the first Six Nations trophy that had come, but a first ever win against England in the most dominant of fashion, 25-0. It can’t get much sweeter than that.

Remembering the victories

“When we see each other now, it may be nothing more than a nod to remember what we achieved. You go to a friend’s wedding or a birthday party, and there is always an element of remembering that thing we did and it doesn’t even have to be said,” Jenny described.

“It is a mix that knits us as a group, the victories taste so much sweeter when they are with people you love. Even the rotten losses and terrible injuries are a little bit softer because you know the people to the left and right of you are going through the exact same thing. The success has helped but a lot of the bond is in a lot of the crap that went before it.”

The Grand Slam squad can now relax and reflect on their historic victories together, but at the time, it was onto the next. The next destination was France and the 2014 World Cup, the draw and a structure of which did not give many outside of the Ireland camp much hope. But inside of it, there was a quiet confidence.

“The way the Women’s World Cup is structured, you have to win your group. All your group winners and the best runner up progress. We were in with the Black Ferns. They hadn’t been beaten in 16 years. It seemed like everyone thought we might beat the USA and Kazakhstan, both really physical teams, but New Zealand? We seemed to receive a sarcastic ‘best of luck with that one, girls’.”

Ireland 17-14 New Zealand

The Black Ferns had dominated women’s rugby winning the previous four World Cups but Philip Doyle and his squad had no intention of being another footnote in New Zealand’s era of dominance.

That win represented the first time since 1991 that New Zealand had lost in the Women’s World Cup.

“I remember watching Frozen the night before the game and us having a sing song. We were just really content because all the hard work was done. There was a lot of belief in each other and belief in what the management were about,” Jenny said.

“We paid no attention to anything outside of the team, it was tight knit and a good bubble to be in. When we were getting praise for big wins, it did not impact us that much, we were protected.”

The historic run at the World Cup would come to an end at the hands of the eventual winner’s England. There was little more to say on being beaten by the better team on the day but when the third place play-off rolled around against the home nation, it left a sour taste in the mouth.

Regret

“A few months afterwards I was still raging about the France game, I still think about that game now. England were 100% better than us and deserved to get to the final, but the France game is still something I groan about. We just should have won it, and even now I feel we did something great at the tournament but it could have been greater,” Jenny explained.

The months post-tournament would pose different problems for Jenny as she experienced chronic injuries that would put her out for over a year between World Cups.

“I was being told that I could be back in eight weeks, and then, oh no it might be longer. Just having that hope there and being taken away so much was just so mentally fatiguing.

“A doctor even told me I might never play again and when I was in the Sevens programme, I had to go to training and watch. That was hard being unable to help your teammates and feeling so isolated.”

In a similar vein to when she started her Irish career, Jenny could always rely on the people around her for support and guidance. It doesn’t always have to be inspirational quotes or poetic words to kick you into gear again, as Jenny found out from one of her best friends Ailis Egan, another former Irish international.

“She just told me to stop feeling sorry for myself and get on with it. Which is just what I needed to hear at that time. The injuries, as hard as they were, I’m still glad that I got them. I wouldn’t like any more now but they changed me for the better, I’m much more present and I really appreciate playing rugby,” she said.

“I still get nervous because I care so much and I’m just now able to take a step back and appreciate what I’m doing at that moment.”

Jenny self-admittedly never enjoyed watching from the sidelines, but she had trained as a PE teacher and still had some of that coaching desire in her. The problem with PE was that not everyone was as enthusiastic as their teacher, something that would never be a problem when Jenny took a coaching role with the Naas senior women’s team in 2018.

Jenny Murphy coaching a Leinster Rugby Girls Give it a try session at Naas RFC in November 2020. Picture: Sportsfile

“I absolutely loved my time there but because of work, my own training and where I’m living it just couldn’t work which is a shame. They were a cracking bunch of women who wanted to play good rugby and wanted to enjoy themselves too,” Jenny said.

“There are so many mini wins as a coach, when you see one of the girls counter-ruck and it’s something that we have been working on and it has been executed really well. If something just clicks, it is satisfying in a different way to playing yourself.”

Yet the desire to play high-level rugby herself is still there.

“I had all the time in the world for those women because of their enthusiasm for the game and when I hang up the boots I might think about going back to it. But there’s life in me yet.”

Jenny Murphy is a panellist with Virgin Media for the 2022 Guinness Six Nations.

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