IT’S NO WONDER that Ruaidhri Murphy has made a success of coaching in Japanese rugby. He has embraced a nomadic sort of lifestyle from the beginning.
Murphy was born in Dublin but moved with his family to Australia at the age of two. 12 years later, they returned to Ireland. He came through the Leinster system, then moved to Exeter before shifting to Australia again. Two years later, he was back on Irish soil with Ulster, but fast forward another couple of years, and Murphy was Down Under again.
It makes sense that the coffee shop he and his wife, Celeste, own in Canberra is called Nomad.
38-year-old Murphy is coaching with Suntory Sungoliath in Tokyo these days, but he and his family are regular visitors back to Canberra, where he played and coached with the Brumbies and still has the coffee shop, a house, and a car.
He was on Aussie soil last week along with a couple of other Suntory coaches. They were in with the Waratahs and then Stephen Larkham’s Brumbies, observing both sides’ preparations to face the touring Lions.
That meant an opportunity to sit down and discuss what has been an intriguing journey in rugby and life so far.
“I’m an Irish-Australian,I would say more than an Australian who’s Irish,” said Murphy in a quiet hotel café in Canberra.
“Heart is probably Irish, but this here is really familiar. You don’t feel wrong here at all, or foreign here or fake here, not pretending when we’re here, it feels like home as well. It’s a weird mix.
“But yeah, I would say we’re Irish-Australians, not the other way.”
It was his father’s work as an electrician that started the love affair with Australia in 1989. Oz was booming and there was a shortage of tradespeople and nurses. The Murphys went to a fair at the RDS and jumped at the opportunity, moving to Perth.
“That became home,” said Murphy, who was 14 when his parents decided to go back to Ireland. They had both lost their fathers and it was a case of ‘now or never.’
Murphy playing for Lansdowne in 2008. Dan Sheridan / INPHO
Dan Sheridan / INPHO / INPHO
Murphy loved being around his cousins but didn’t like it in Irish school when they moved home to Arklow in County Wicklow. Things settled when he went off to boarding school at Castleknock College in Dublin.
He had played more rugby league and baseball in Australia, but Murphy started to make a name for himself as a loosehead prop with Castleknock, playing for Leinster and Ireland Schools before featuring in an excellent Ireland U20s squad that won a Grand Slam in 2007.
“It was a great group,” said Murphy. “You had people like Cian Healy, who was locked in and was going to develop quickly.”
The U20s forwards coach, Dan McFarland, tried to convince Murphy to come across to Connacht on a senior contract, but he opted for an academy deal with his native Leinster.
He never got a senior debut for his province but learned huge amounts from being in the Leinster set-up in the years before they took the step to winning their first Heineken Cup in 2009.
“I guarantee it’s still the same today, the academy’s elite,” said Murphy.
“There’s an ethic, there’s a standard because you might have your three-year cycle in the academy, but you’ve got to earn your progression through that cycle. There’s no given there.”
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With Healy fast-tracked, Ollie Le Roux there, and CJ van der Linde coming in at loosehead, opportunities were scarce and Murphy decided to move to Exeter, then in the English Championship. He helped them get promoted to the Premiership and stay there, before the Brumbies popped up.
Current Wallabies assistant Laurie Fisher, who was on his way back to Canberra from Munster, made the connection. He had noticed the Irishman with an Aussie accent. Murphy jumped at signing for an “iconic” team like the Brumbies.
It was an exciting time. Jake White had taken over in the wake of a disastrous 2011. Murphy was one of 16 new players. Aled Walters, the Lions’ and Ireland’s head of S&C, was there. Larkham and Fisher were on the coaching staff, and Dan McKellar was involved too.
“Jake put in world-class people to make systems and processes and expectation,” said Murphy. “And then he obviously left because he got another bigger calling, but the foundation was laid and it was never let go.”
Murphy playing Super Rugby for the Brumbies. Alamy Stock Photo
Alamy Stock Photo
Murphy excelled to the point that he was briefly being discussed as a possible Wallabies call-up, even though he was classified as a non-Australian player despite living there for 12 years as a child.
It was 2014 when the call came from Ulster. The idea of being back home in Ireland near his family was hard to resist. Murphy had just turned 27 and it was an interesting move at the time. Unfortunately, it didn’t work out.
“It was a bit of a mess,” said Murphy. “I signed for Mark Anscombe and David Humphreys, and when I rocked up, they were both gone.”
Murphy missed pre-season because the Brumbies made the Super Rugby semi-finals and was always playing catch-up. His second season started more promisingly but then he broke his hand twice and that proved to be the end of his playing career.
“My hand’s still busted, it never became 100% again,” said Murphy. “I broke my finger and paralysed the hand, so I can’t close my fist. For a front rower…
“For the first year, if I accidentally knocked it against anything, it would blow up. I saw a surgeon back here after we came back and I was trying to get her to cut it off. It was that bad.”
The whole experience back in Ulster left Murphy mentally scarred. Forced into early retirement, he felt he was done with rugby altogether. He and Celeste had just got engaged and their plan was to “rip into life” in Canberra.
In hindsight, though, Murphy was probably always destined to be a coach. He feels fully at home in this profession.
“I’m a super diligent person,” he said. “I’m on the edge of OCD, planning helps me. I’ve been that way apparently since I was born. Like, line up cars, sort out my own uniforms, I was self-sufficient across organisational stuff.”
He was also a very technical, thoughtful player.
“I had to be fit, strong, and technical because I wasn’t naturally an angry player.
“I didn’t have natural pig and anger, I wasn’t in your face, it wasn’t my game ever. You play a nasty position, so I had to find a different way to do it.
“And I reckon you probably need that at an elite level, it probably held me back. I was the best Monday to Friday. I probably didn’t have enough good Saturdays.”
Murphy was with Ulster from 2014 to 2016. Presseye / Matt Mackey/INPHO
Presseye / Matt Mackey/INPHO / Matt Mackey/INPHO
Being around the likes of Michael Cheika, Rob Baxter, White, Fisher, and Larkham rubbed off on him too. It was the Brumbies who gave him the chance to coach, initially working with their U20s.
As he launched the coffee shop, Murphy also began coaching with the Gungahlin Eagles, Mack Hansen’s club, then he was involved with the Canberra Vikings in the now-defunct National Rugby Championship before two happy years as an Australia U20s assistant coach.
Murphy threw himself into coaching, taking every opportunity to improve his craft, something he continues now with coaching development visits to clubs around the world, as with last week’s trip back to Australia.
He ended up getting the Brumbies’ scrum coaching gig in Super Rugby and loved being there until the Japan chapter opened in 2020. The Ricoh Black Rams in Tokyo needed a young, energetic forwards coach and there was a two-year offer on the table. The Brumbies wanted to keep Murphy but head coach McKellar told him it was an offer they couldn’t match.
The Covid-19 pandemic made the initial stages of life in Japan difficult, even if the Murphys and their first daughter, Alana, got to Ireland at one stage.
“We were the only people on the plane from Tokyo to Dublin,” said Murphy. “I can’t tell you, it was the weirdest experience.
“Just the three of us on the plane with the cabin crew. It was so strange.”
Last year, Murphy made the short move across town to Suntory Sungoliath, one of the biggest clubs in Japan, and is enjoying the experience of working with top-class players like Sam Cane and Cheslin Kolbe.
“The only thing acceptable at Suntory is winning,” said Murphy.
His parents and two siblings have enjoyed visiting Japan on a couple of trips from Ireland, while Murphy’s own family have integrated wonderfully into Japanese life.
Alana is now six-and-a-half, her brother Geordan is three, and little Ronan arrived in February of this year.
Murphy at training in Tokyo Suntory Sungoliath
Suntory Sungoliath
“We’ve got no support in Japan, it’s us,” said Murphy. “And in Japan, it’s trains everywhere, up and down. The kids love it. They say they want sushi for dinner or they want to go eat ramen.
“Alana speaks Japanese, goes to school with Japanese kids, they just crack on. My wife, if she didn’t like it, it would be hard. But she loves it there. It’s safe. The old Irish way, we can send Alana to the shop to get something, no problem.”
Murphy himself understands how moving around when you’re young gives you a resilience and an openness to the world that never leaves.
His family back in Ireland remain hopeful that Ruairidh’s journey has another twist ahead, one that brings him back home.
He’s not someone who has a great master plan, although he’d love to be involved in a World Cup at some stage and feels he could manage the step up to being a head coach in the future.
“Long story short, if something came up for me to do in Ireland, my family would beg me to take it,” he said.
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'I'm an Irish-Australian, more than an Australian who's Irish'
IT’S NO WONDER that Ruaidhri Murphy has made a success of coaching in Japanese rugby. He has embraced a nomadic sort of lifestyle from the beginning.
Murphy was born in Dublin but moved with his family to Australia at the age of two. 12 years later, they returned to Ireland. He came through the Leinster system, then moved to Exeter before shifting to Australia again. Two years later, he was back on Irish soil with Ulster, but fast forward another couple of years, and Murphy was Down Under again.
It makes sense that the coffee shop he and his wife, Celeste, own in Canberra is called Nomad.
38-year-old Murphy is coaching with Suntory Sungoliath in Tokyo these days, but he and his family are regular visitors back to Canberra, where he played and coached with the Brumbies and still has the coffee shop, a house, and a car.
He was on Aussie soil last week along with a couple of other Suntory coaches. They were in with the Waratahs and then Stephen Larkham’s Brumbies, observing both sides’ preparations to face the touring Lions.
That meant an opportunity to sit down and discuss what has been an intriguing journey in rugby and life so far.
“I’m an Irish-Australian, I would say more than an Australian who’s Irish,” said Murphy in a quiet hotel café in Canberra.
“Heart is probably Irish, but this here is really familiar. You don’t feel wrong here at all, or foreign here or fake here, not pretending when we’re here, it feels like home as well. It’s a weird mix.
“But yeah, I would say we’re Irish-Australians, not the other way.”
It was his father’s work as an electrician that started the love affair with Australia in 1989. Oz was booming and there was a shortage of tradespeople and nurses. The Murphys went to a fair at the RDS and jumped at the opportunity, moving to Perth.
“That became home,” said Murphy, who was 14 when his parents decided to go back to Ireland. They had both lost their fathers and it was a case of ‘now or never.’
Murphy loved being around his cousins but didn’t like it in Irish school when they moved home to Arklow in County Wicklow. Things settled when he went off to boarding school at Castleknock College in Dublin.
He had played more rugby league and baseball in Australia, but Murphy started to make a name for himself as a loosehead prop with Castleknock, playing for Leinster and Ireland Schools before featuring in an excellent Ireland U20s squad that won a Grand Slam in 2007.
“It was a great group,” said Murphy. “You had people like Cian Healy, who was locked in and was going to develop quickly.”
The U20s forwards coach, Dan McFarland, tried to convince Murphy to come across to Connacht on a senior contract, but he opted for an academy deal with his native Leinster.
He never got a senior debut for his province but learned huge amounts from being in the Leinster set-up in the years before they took the step to winning their first Heineken Cup in 2009.
“I guarantee it’s still the same today, the academy’s elite,” said Murphy.
“There’s an ethic, there’s a standard because you might have your three-year cycle in the academy, but you’ve got to earn your progression through that cycle. There’s no given there.”
With Healy fast-tracked, Ollie Le Roux there, and CJ van der Linde coming in at loosehead, opportunities were scarce and Murphy decided to move to Exeter, then in the English Championship. He helped them get promoted to the Premiership and stay there, before the Brumbies popped up.
Current Wallabies assistant Laurie Fisher, who was on his way back to Canberra from Munster, made the connection. He had noticed the Irishman with an Aussie accent. Murphy jumped at signing for an “iconic” team like the Brumbies.
It was an exciting time. Jake White had taken over in the wake of a disastrous 2011. Murphy was one of 16 new players. Aled Walters, the Lions’ and Ireland’s head of S&C, was there. Larkham and Fisher were on the coaching staff, and Dan McKellar was involved too.
“Jake put in world-class people to make systems and processes and expectation,” said Murphy. “And then he obviously left because he got another bigger calling, but the foundation was laid and it was never let go.”
Murphy excelled to the point that he was briefly being discussed as a possible Wallabies call-up, even though he was classified as a non-Australian player despite living there for 12 years as a child.
It was 2014 when the call came from Ulster. The idea of being back home in Ireland near his family was hard to resist. Murphy had just turned 27 and it was an interesting move at the time. Unfortunately, it didn’t work out.
“It was a bit of a mess,” said Murphy. “I signed for Mark Anscombe and David Humphreys, and when I rocked up, they were both gone.”
Murphy missed pre-season because the Brumbies made the Super Rugby semi-finals and was always playing catch-up. His second season started more promisingly but then he broke his hand twice and that proved to be the end of his playing career.
“My hand’s still busted, it never became 100% again,” said Murphy. “I broke my finger and paralysed the hand, so I can’t close my fist. For a front rower…
“For the first year, if I accidentally knocked it against anything, it would blow up. I saw a surgeon back here after we came back and I was trying to get her to cut it off. It was that bad.”
The whole experience back in Ulster left Murphy mentally scarred. Forced into early retirement, he felt he was done with rugby altogether. He and Celeste had just got engaged and their plan was to “rip into life” in Canberra.
In hindsight, though, Murphy was probably always destined to be a coach. He feels fully at home in this profession.
“I’m a super diligent person,” he said. “I’m on the edge of OCD, planning helps me. I’ve been that way apparently since I was born. Like, line up cars, sort out my own uniforms, I was self-sufficient across organisational stuff.”
He was also a very technical, thoughtful player.
“I had to be fit, strong, and technical because I wasn’t naturally an angry player.
“I didn’t have natural pig and anger, I wasn’t in your face, it wasn’t my game ever. You play a nasty position, so I had to find a different way to do it.
“And I reckon you probably need that at an elite level, it probably held me back. I was the best Monday to Friday. I probably didn’t have enough good Saturdays.”
Being around the likes of Michael Cheika, Rob Baxter, White, Fisher, and Larkham rubbed off on him too. It was the Brumbies who gave him the chance to coach, initially working with their U20s.
As he launched the coffee shop, Murphy also began coaching with the Gungahlin Eagles, Mack Hansen’s club, then he was involved with the Canberra Vikings in the now-defunct National Rugby Championship before two happy years as an Australia U20s assistant coach.
Murphy threw himself into coaching, taking every opportunity to improve his craft, something he continues now with coaching development visits to clubs around the world, as with last week’s trip back to Australia.
He ended up getting the Brumbies’ scrum coaching gig in Super Rugby and loved being there until the Japan chapter opened in 2020. The Ricoh Black Rams in Tokyo needed a young, energetic forwards coach and there was a two-year offer on the table. The Brumbies wanted to keep Murphy but head coach McKellar told him it was an offer they couldn’t match.
The Covid-19 pandemic made the initial stages of life in Japan difficult, even if the Murphys and their first daughter, Alana, got to Ireland at one stage.
“We were the only people on the plane from Tokyo to Dublin,” said Murphy. “I can’t tell you, it was the weirdest experience.
“Just the three of us on the plane with the cabin crew. It was so strange.”
Last year, Murphy made the short move across town to Suntory Sungoliath, one of the biggest clubs in Japan, and is enjoying the experience of working with top-class players like Sam Cane and Cheslin Kolbe.
“The only thing acceptable at Suntory is winning,” said Murphy.
His parents and two siblings have enjoyed visiting Japan on a couple of trips from Ireland, while Murphy’s own family have integrated wonderfully into Japanese life.
Alana is now six-and-a-half, her brother Geordan is three, and little Ronan arrived in February of this year.
“We’ve got no support in Japan, it’s us,” said Murphy. “And in Japan, it’s trains everywhere, up and down. The kids love it. They say they want sushi for dinner or they want to go eat ramen.
“Alana speaks Japanese, goes to school with Japanese kids, they just crack on. My wife, if she didn’t like it, it would be hard. But she loves it there. It’s safe. The old Irish way, we can send Alana to the shop to get something, no problem.”
Murphy himself understands how moving around when you’re young gives you a resilience and an openness to the world that never leaves.
His family back in Ireland remain hopeful that Ruairidh’s journey has another twist ahead, one that brings him back home.
He’s not someone who has a great master plan, although he’d love to be involved in a World Cup at some stage and feels he could manage the step up to being a head coach in the future.
“Long story short, if something came up for me to do in Ireland, my family would beg me to take it,” he said.
“And we would love to, what an opportunity.”
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Brumbies Irish Abroad Japan Leinster Ruaidhri Murphy Ulster