The first time Billy Morton saw Frank Murphy win a schoolboy race in Santry he grabbed him by the arm and looked him in the eye.
“Murphy,” he said, “you’re going to be a great f**king runner, and you’ll have all these half-baked coaches coming up, telling you what to do. Just tell them to f**k off.”
The advice was only half-heeded: Murphy became a great runner, only when Jumbo Elliott soon approached and offered him a scholarship at Villanova, Murphy politely accepted – and the rest is Irish distance running history.
This little tribute is hidden in A Golden Era, a recent collection of profiles and interviews with some of the great veterans of Irish running, by athlete-turned-scholar Michael Gygax. Murphy never actually competed as a veteran, his inclusion therefore explained by his wide and lasting influence on the sport, and the unique character that he brought with it.
Indeed not many Irish athletes have come even close to earning themselves any sort of comparison with George Best, nor would necessarily even want to, which is just as well. Such rare and exceptional breeds don't come along very often, although in A Golden Era, PJ Browne makes the telling case of why deep in the foundation of Murphy's career the comparison is modestly and suitably justified.
That Best and Murphy ended up good friends is just one small reflection of that. The last thing Murphy set out to do was to either reach or rival the sporting heights of Best’s career, or anything else that went on outside of it, but when their heydays ran naturally parallel in the late 1960s there were often times when Murphy played on and perhaps even played into that comparison.
What is certain is that for an athlete who never actually won a major championship title, Murphy clearly won himself a lot of admirers and affection and an infinite amount of respect. He was a colossal running talent, brilliantly determined on the track and witting and charming off it, and managed to get on well with nearly everybody, especially the ladies.
Over-generous
He was also fond of the booze, although unlike Best, never had a problem with it – except when it came to buying over-generous rounds, even when among minor acquaintances such as myself.
His athletic feats, while perfectly reasonably shy of Best’s, were at times nonetheless dazzling. Murphy liked to put on a bit of a show. In 1969, on the back of winning an American collegiate indoor title over 800m, he demolished and demoralised his opponents to win a British 1,500m title, clocking 3:40.90, finally breaking the Irish record of 3:41.49 which had stood to Ronnie Delany since the 1956 Olympics in Melbourne.
Murphy then went to the 1969 European Championships in Athens gunning for gold. He grabbed the race by the horns, only for Britain’s John Whetton to get a slight run on him, on the last lap. Murphy threw everything into the chase, yet fell just short – Whetton winning gold in 3:39.4, Murphy winning silver in 3:39.5, the first Irish man to break 3:40.
His two Olympic appearances, Mexico 1968, and Munich 1972, were hampered by injury. Sandwiched in between, Murphy offered some evidence of what might have been when he pressed Kenya’s Kip Keino, who won 1,500m gold in Mexico, all the way to the line in the 1970 Morton Mile: Keino ran 3:59.2, Murphy 3:59.3. He’d retired by the time the 1976 Olympics came around, diverting his energies elsewhere, running several pubs and restaurants around Dublin.
No wonder his death on Thursday evening, at age 69, instantly hit the tribute switch. Eamonn Coghlan reckoned he owed it all to Murphy, and that’s no great exaggeration: with the exception of Delany, no Irish athlete had achieved more success on the American scholarship trail, Murphy’s fame at Villanova, between 1966 and 1969, directly influencing Coghlan’s decision to follow suit, in 1972 – that same trail later followed by Marcus O’Sullivan, and later still Sonia O’Sullivan.
Ran him close
“And I don’t think I ever actually beat Frank, although I ran him close,” my dad told me on Thursday night, which believe me, in our household, is no small tribute. Their careers didn’t run directly parallel but such was Murphy’s loyalty to his club, Clonliffe Harriers, there was no shying away from a duel.
Another of his close friends, steeplechaser Des McCormack, whose time at Villanova also coincided with Murphy's, also reckons the Best comparison is justified, though a little unfair: "Frank was hugely popular with an array of Villanova athletes," he says in A Golden Era, "basketball players, swimmers, footballers. They gravitated toward him. A lot of them wouldn't have known about his commitment to training, because he tried to project himself as the Georgie Best of athletics.
“For years I’ve been hearing that Frank didn’t train hard enough, he didn’t put it in, he was a choker, and couldn’t cope with the big-meet pressures. That’s a load of nonsense. I’d say every athlete asks himself the question, did he get the most out of his talent, especially when his career has finished. I’ll answer that for Frank. I think he got 99.9 per cent out of it and that’s a wonderful thing for any athlete.”
The last time we met was two years ago, at the Crowne Plaza hotel in Santry. Murphy was about to be inducted into the Athletics Ireland Hall of Fame, and we chatted about a lot things, including the fact he was suffering from Parkinson’s disease, yet the first thing he asked me was was I okay for a drink. I politely declined, and he looked me in the eye . . .
