IT WAS HEADLINED as a ‘blow’ to Connacht when it was confirmed earlier this month that Josh Murphy would take a year out of rugby to further his career in medicine.
Certainly, the western province will feel Murphy’s absence: the forward made 17 starts across the back five of Connacht’s pack last season, clocking up 1,172 minutes as Andy Friend’s side salvaged a URC play-off run from a poisonous start.
But Friend’s successor, Pete Wilkins, would have been planning for a season without the big Wexford man even before his promotion to head coach was formalised back in February. Indeed, Connacht knew as far back as the 2021/22 season, when they first sounded out Murphy about swinging west from Leinster, that a more dramatic career pivot lay ahead in ’23/24.
“I was honest with Connacht, I just told them the craic,” recalls Murphy, who recently started his intern year as doctor. “I would need to do the internship after one year there — because you can’t leave it for too long after you graduate.
“So, it was up to them whether they wanted to offer me a two-year contract or a one-year contract.
They knew this was important to me and they were really supportive: they offered me the two-year contract and they very kindly gave me the option to either continue playing after my first year or to go and do this internship and then complete my contract a year later.
“So I was able to choose this,” Murphy continues, having just finished a day shift for his new team: the ENT (ear, nose and throat) department at St James’ Hospital in Dublin.
“It was a really nice security that I was given by Connacht. There were no bells or whistles about it, I suppose.
“This is a lot to take on but it’s nice to see the fruits of your labour from college, which I was doing for so long. It’s nice to apply some of the information that’s in your head, to go and use it, even if I am missing out on a year of rugby.
“And it’s nice to be able to give this my full attention for the first time since I started studying it a good few years ago.”
In all, it’s taken him eight years of book work and training to get this far.
When Murphy first sat down to fill out his CAO form as a student at St Michael’s College, he found himself torn between engineering (“I like maths”) and medicine (“I also like science”).
His grandfather was a surgeon in Galway but this didn’t consciously influence Murphy’s eventual choice. Ultimately, a general love for people and, more pertinently, the idea of treating them, struck him as being the more fulfilling way to one day make a living. “It sounds real generic…” Murphy scoffs at himself. “I just don’t have a big poetic answer for ya, unfortunately.”
Indeed, the romance might instead be found in one of his college jobs: Murphy has balanced his studies with professional rugby for the last six years since coming through the Leinster academy, making 61 appearances for his native province before joining Connacht at the start of last season.
Work-wise, it was always going to be medicine. And while was rugby was no accident, either — Murphy played schools ball with Michael’s and went on to represent Ireland U20s, captaining them against Wales in the 2015 World Cup — it typically sat a rung below his studies in UCD on his list of long-term priorities.
“When you’re in college and you’re actually trying to make it in rugby, you never actually know if it’s going to become a career — you just always want to make the next team,” Murphy explains.
It took a while for it to cross my radar that it would actually be possible to do rugby professionally — which was really cool, but because it took me so long, I had never made one big plan in relation to, ‘I’ll do medicine at this point,’ or ‘I’ll leave rugby at that point’. Rugby’s such an enjoyable thing to play that you just keep going until someone says ‘no.’
“Long-term-wise, no one told me medicine would be eight years in college — but I was in too far to try and change it,” Murphy laughs. “And now, long-term, I’m happy that I did it.”
For the two years after he graduated in 2021 — which encased his final season at Leinster and his first season at Connacht — UCD allowed Murphy to tackle his post-grad in a part-time capacity: he would continue his hospital training mostly on days in which he didn’t have rugby training, or after half-sessions.
For the first time in his life, sport became the primary focus, but he describes the feeling of not having college exams hanging over him as being merely “interesting” rather than especially alleviating.
See, it was always in the back of my mind, even while playing rugby, that this internship was coming up. That was a bit strange for the last six months of rugby: you’re wondering if you need to go over your notes from the whole eight years. ‘What the hell do you do while you’re waiting?’ It was weird not having that specific focus.
In retrospect, ‘weird’ was probably good.
“Now, my days have taken a bit of a turn!” Murphy says. “Earlier starts and later finishes would be the best description of it — and less sleep.
“I’m mainly based on the wards, day to day, and then you’ve got certain bits of on-call that you have to do as well on the weekends or at night.
“I kind of do what I’m told,” the 28-year-old laughs. “I’m trying to think of how I can best describe it to you, but… I don’t want to sound too casual about it.
“Basically, I make some management and treatment decisions and, if someone is sick, I try to do my best; and then I tell someone more senior if I’m not sure what I’m doing.
“Being an intern is all part of the training to become a fully registered doctor in Ireland — but in practicality, you are a doctor on the team.
“It’s not just sitting back and observing, which is the case when you’re a student. I’m now making some decisions. It’s learning by doing, I suppose. That’s what an intern is: I’m a doctor but a very junior doctor!”
Murphy, who began this latest stage of his training in July, will spend just over four more months in St James’ and then a further six months in Kilkenny.
Then, it’ll be back to Connacht next summer ahead of his deferred second season.
In the meantime, of course, he’ll have to keep himself in good nick. Murphy says the western province have been “class” on that front, both offering him any kind of S&C content he needs and stressing that it’s fine if he wishes to take a break from their official program.
He won’t be much shy for rugby fitness, anyway, because Murphy has already joined 2021/22 AIL champions Clontarf ahead of their upcoming Division 1A campaign, even enjoying a joint training session with former employers Leinster at Castle Avenue on Tuesday night.
“I thought I’d actually want more of a break from rugby, maybe, to give my body a rest. But I found I was finished with my break pretty quickly over the summer!” Murphy says.
“So, I’m going to play AIL and hopefully we’ll go well in that. I’ve been doing a good bit of gym and stuff, which is good to clear the head anyway, but training and playing with Clontarf should keep my body up to scratch.
“I think people underestimate how good the AIL is,” adds Murphy, who previously represented UCD for several seasons before breaking through at Leinster. “It’s not that big a step-down from professional rugby — you just kinda train less.
“I’ll just be trying to fit into this team and help us win. It’s not like I’ll be scoring 10 tries a week. These are very, very good teams and I’m really looking forward to going back to it and seeing what I can add to Clontarf. It should be fun.”
Along similar lines, Murphy reflects with a real fondness on his first season with Connacht.
The versatile forward made career-high appearances for a single season last term, becoming a fans’ favourite as the men from the west transformed ominous early-season form into their most enjoyable run since their Pro12 title seven years ago.
And fans across the province can rest assured that Murphy will be back in a year’s time to see to his unfinished business at The Sportsground and beyond.
“It was great. I loved it. I loved playing for Connacht,” he says.
“I loved — once I performed, I suppose — getting to play more games. I really, really enjoyed that side of it, trying to improve on things on the pitch as opposed to my games at Leinster which were a little bit more sparse depending on what time of year it was.
“In that regard, it was hard to build on any momentum you might have gained at Leinster, whereas at Connacht last year, I played — I dunno, whatever it was — 20-odd games and got to try to improve nearly every week.
It was still very competitive in Connacht and by no means was I a guarantee on the team, but it was nice to try and push yourself in a different environment and to push for slightly different objectives, as well: the URC was almost a given for Leinster for a few years, so it was a really enjoyable goal in Connacht to go after that and get to the play-offs.
“I really, really enjoyed it.”
“I’m missing it — I’m missing it a little bit, now, to be honest,” Murphy adds, pausing for a moment. “You see that the train just rolls on without you. It’s a strange feeling.”
All of that being said, Murphy didn’t think twice about ducking out of the team WhatsApp group earlier this summer as he prepared for 12 months on the wards.
“I said I’d better get out for the year and come back in fresh, start introducing myself again next year,” he laughs.
“I couldn’t be dealing with all the chat in it… with all the free time the lads have!”
