Jordi Murphy doesn’t often do interviews that touch on the first and lasting influence of his grandfather Noel Carroll, the two-time Olympian, three-time European indoor 800m champion, world indoor-relay record breaker and one of the most dominant runners of his time.
He doesn’t often talk rugby to an athletics correspondent either, so it’s important to get off to a good start, or have at least a good rugby question at the ready: Murphy was listed to start Ulster’s ultimately narrow loss to Toulouse in their European Cup opener last Friday night, only he didn’t feature at all, so was he injured, sick, dropped maybe?
“Yep, all set to start,” he says, “then my partner started going into labour on Thursday evening, and our first baby girl was born at about 6.0pm on Friday evening. So I don’t think I was going to make it to the game after all that.
“All are doing well, Laura my partner, Lily our new addition, all delighted. The team had a contingency plan in place, knew she was due any day. Of course I wanted to be there for the whole birth, but got to watch the game back since, the team put in a serious shift, so still lots of things to be pleased about.”
Moving swiftly along so. Murphy’s grandfather and my father were old team-mates and friends, both running in the 1964 Olympics in Tokyo, Carroll running the 800m again in Mexico City in 1968. Carroll, however, died unexpectedly young, after one of his regular noontime training runs around Belfield, in October 1998. He was 56 years old, the embodiment of clean living and physical fitness, the sadly gentle irony being he died of a suspected heart attack, leaving behind a still unique record in Irish 800m running.
Murphy was only seven years old at the time, at that point still living in Barcelona, where he was born in April 1991 (named after Catalonia’s patron saint), after his mother Nicola, one of Carroll’s four children, and his father Conor Murphy moved there in the late in the 1980s.
“Because we were still living in Barcelona, until I was about eight, I never really heard much about him being Noel the runner, he was just Noel my granddad. He’d be over to visit us in Spain, or we’d be home for Christmas, but I just wasn’t aware at that age of how good he was, and all the things he achieved.
“It was only when we moved home, after he passed away, that I started to learn a good bit more about him. I certainly remember him being a very fit and healthy man. Again it was later when I started to read more, see some trophies around with his name on them, shared around the family, that I became more aware of his influence.”
That influence being uniquely lasting too, Carroll co-founding the first Dublin Marathon in 1980, and two years later, co-starting the first Goal Mile, on Christmas Day of 1982 (with Goal founder John O’Shea), when a few hardy souls showed up in the Phoenix Park to test their distance running mettle against the seasonal excess, and raise some vital funds for the international humanitarian response agency.
For as long as he can remember, running the Goal Mile has been part of Murphy’s Christmas Day, and this year will be no exception: the event may have gone virtual thanks to Covid-19, only he’s got a plan to make it count and keep that tradition alive.
“Because we would have come home every Christmas, this was the big part of our day, getting down to the old Belfield running track. When the Dublin Marathon [winning] trophy was named after Noel, I’ve been invited to some of the prizegiving, and one of the big things for me, especially with all his history behind it, is to run the Dublin Marathon someday.”
His mother Nicola, along with her siblings Enda, Noel (junior) and Stephen, have all done their own marathon tribute to their father, running New York a few years back. Murphy did briefly dabble in the more competitive side of running, on the track and on the country, and still credits that background to his development as one of the more athletic backrows in the game.
“I can still remember the first time I played a game of rugby, it was third class in Willow Park, one of the teacher’s said ‘right, we’re going to play a game of rugby’. I hadn’t a clue about the game at that stage. All I knew is you got to hold the ball, and got to run through a load of people, while they try to catch you.
“Around the same time we’d an Irish teacher in Willow Park who was big into cross-country running, had run something like 50 marathons himself, and he had us out during the winter too, slogging it out on the cross-country course, trying to break through the pain barrier. I always thought I’d like to do it again, that one day I’d make it up the front, but that never materialised.
“I also did some running with Dundrum-South Dublin, over the summer months, in the 4x100m relay, and always felt that helped me when it came back to rugby training. By third or fourth year in Blackrock, it was basically a full-time sport, training five days a week, a game on Saturday. But I still loved all sport, and building up fitness like that I think definitely helped me when I went into the backrow, to have the tank to last the 80 minutes. And I know I have to thank Noel for some of that athleticism-side of things.”
No regrets whatsoever at his choice and chosen sport, however: “I don’t ever remember thinking at 15 or 16 ‘I want to be a professional rugby player’, it was just one of those things that happened, especially in my final year at school, getting on those provincial teams, the Ireland schools team.
“That was the same time Leinster won their first Heineken Cup, in 2009, and at that point it was something that became a possibility, getting the nod to join the Leinster Academy at the end of sixth year. But again I think definitely one of the things that helped me, I didn’t limit myself to one sport growing up.”
He’s also committed to Ulster to the end of the 2022 season, home from home since 2018 now Ballyhackamore, in East Belfast: “’I’ve actually been in the same place since day one, my partner is here two and a half years now, and we’ve really enjoyed the time here so far.
“For this year’s Goal Mile, the plan is to round up one or two troops, and run at Stormont Estate, a short distance away. That’s one of the benefits of it being virtual, even though I won’t be down for Christmas, we can do it from here. I probably won’t be setting any personal best. We have a game against Connacht on the 27th, so they won’t want me sprinting too hard.”
To sign up for your Virtual Goal Mile see www.goalglobal.org/goal-mile/
