REMEMBER ‘Murphy; Elliott, Larder’? For three seasons, at least, in the 1970s, this trio of pacy backs were the three first names on the Oldham team sheet. Back in the mists of time, players signed for their clubs for life, unlike these days when they sign contracts for a specific period of time, mainly one year.
Players under the old system tended to stay with one club for much longer than they do today, writes ROGER HALSTEAD.
Martin Murphy, Mike Elliott and Phil Larder, for instance, amassed 1,236 games between them, each wearing Roughyeds colours for longer than 12 years and, between them, scoring 316 tries.
Murphy, Elliott, Larder were as familiar as Freeman, Hardy and Willis.
Full-back Murphy made a club post-war record 462 appearances, scoring 52 tries, 156 points.
Right-wing Elliott wasn’t far behind on 446 games in which he amassed 153 tries (many of them created by his centre Larder), equating to 459 points.
Right-centre Larder played in “only” 328 games, but how’s this for a scoring record — 111 tries, 475 goals,1,283 points.
Their joint and collective contribution to the Oldham story is topical, as are many right now, because of the distribution of Heritage Certificates in a joint venture by the Heritage Trust, the Players’ Assn. and Oldham RLFC.
Murphy (690) and Elliott (649) have already received theirs at an Oldham game last season, but Larder (705) hasn’t had his yet and the plan is to invite him to the Vestacare Stadium in 2023 for purposes of certificate distribution, but also to recall the ‘Murphy, Eliott, Larder’ days with a picture of the trio together again.
Larder is 77 and the other two are senior citizens also, but the picture of them together now will evoke great memories, many of which surfaced at last Tuesday’s Oldham RL Family Get-Together at Heyside Cricket Club.
All three are remembered fondly by older supporters.
Larder, of course, went on to become the RFL’s Director of Coaching. He wrote two books on rugby league coaching and coached Sheffield, Keighley and Widnes before being appointed Great Britain coach.
He was assistant to Mal Reilly on the 1988 Great Britain tour down under and he coached England in the 1995 World Cup, winning the opening game at Wembley but ultimately losing to Australia in the final.
He also coached GB on their 1996 tour of Fiji, PNG and New Zealand before joining England RU as Clive Woodward’s defence coach in 1997.
The pinnacle of his achievements in the 15-a-side code was winning the RU World Cup in the final against Australia in Australia, for which he received the MBE.
Phil has since revealed that his failure to win the Rugby League World Cup with England in 1995 had a bearing on his decision to join England RU some two years later.
He said:
“My first international head coaching job went well with England beating Australia at Wembley in the first game of the 1995 World Cup.
“We then beat PNG, South Africa and Wales to reach the final. As expected, Australia also reached the final, beating New Zealand in the semi. We had picked up some injuries to key players and we lost a close final.
“I had always asked my players to look in the mirror and to analyse their own performances before coming into the review session, so I also looked at my own coaching performance.
“After the final I wasn’t happy and felt I had made one or two mistakes.
“To think I had blown the biggest game of my career irked me deeply !
“RU persuaded me to jump ships and Clive Woodward inspired me when he said his goal was to win the RU World Cup.
“At that time I was still naive on Union matters and I didn’t know the RU World Cup had only ever been won by Australia, New Zealand and South Africa.
“When we reached the final and beat Australia in Sydney, I had the opportunity to redeem myself. As a result Clive was knighted and I received the MBE.”
It was another example, and there have been many, of an Oldham-born rugby man going to the top in oval-ball sport.
