"One thing I’ve learned is not to be ruled by your emotions,” says Peter Murphy, in the course of explaining an emerging managerial philosophy which comes under the brightest possible spotlight this weekend.
Murphy, the former Carlisle United star, is four-and-a-half seasons into life at the helm of Annan Athletic, the Scottish League Two side he has led into a promotion race this season – and, today, a Scottish Cup fifth round tie with Rangers.
The Premiership champions’ visit to Galabank will, for a while, feel all-consuming, and so it may benefit Annan that, in Murphy, they have a manager known for keeping a calm head amid chaos.
As a player, his poise was central to more than a decade of Carlisle’s progress from relegation strugglers to League One competitors. Since 2017, he has adapted well to the dugout. The team Giovanni van Bronckhorst’s Gers will face next has been reshaped and revamped by Murphy since 2017; partly through circumstance which means change comes at a price at a certain level of the game.
It is undeniably a good proving ground for 41-year-old Murphy, who talks engagingly about the layered challenges of the job, as well as deeper aspects of his psyche, over coffee in Carlisle.
He was December's manager of the month in League Two, having led Annan on an unbeaten run which has only just come to an end after 11 matches. “It was an accolade for the club rather than myself,” he says. “It’s recognition of how we’ve done in a league where we’re not one of the big-hitters financially. But it’s only manager of the month, not manager of the season. If you get that then you’ve actually achieved something.”
Murphy rates his current Annan team, who sit third in the league, as the best of his time at the club. He lost several players after a play-off final defeat in 2019 but has rebuilt steadily. “I ended up having to start again from scratch,” he says. “But a couple of those players came back because they’d gone somewhere else and not enjoyed it as much.
“Last season we were near the bottom end, playing good football but not getting results. This season we started well and confidence grew. We’ve played some nice football but we have players that can mix it up as well. There’s a belief and competition between the players. I put challenges to them about clean sheets, picking up goals from set-pieces and so on.”
Murphy has a core of players from the Carlisle and Dumfries areas, and is conscious that further success could bring further predators. Bigger spenders like Kelty Hearts are rivals this year and he adds: “At lower-league level, the [financial] imbalance is really stark. For a team and club like Annan it’s a case of, ‘Right, how close can we get to them?’ We have to do that with a reduced budget, without the same facilities. We’re up against it. But it’s a great challenge.”
Murphy's long playing career with Carlisle, where he was a double promotion-winner and a Wembley cup hero, took him to Scotland for its final stages. After a spell with Ayr United, he became player-manager at Annan.
“I started learning [about management] the day I got the job,” he says. “About the budget, the players I had to attract, the staff I had to get in. There’s not much I’ve learned on the playing side that I didn’t know, but the emotional side of management is something you do learn.
“It’s quite easy when you lose a game to let your emotions dictate how you react. Some other managers might have a go at players, when it’s maybe unnecessary and a knee-jerk reaction. I’m not like that and never really was as a player.”
Murphy talks about the changing nature of footballers, about social media and mental health. Modern management seems suited to a man of his nature.
“Paul Thirlwell [the former Carlisle captain] did an interview years ago when he was asked who he’d want in the trenches with him in a war, and he said, ‘Peter Murphy, because he never gets flustered’. That always stuck with me. I didn’t realise it myself – it’s just how I am naturally.
“One thing I’ll do at half-time or after the game is take a few minutes with my staff, to have a quick analysis. That gives you a broader spectrum rather than going in and taking your frustrations out on the players.
“There was another time in my second season where we had two centre-backs suspended and I had to play. We drew but should have won easily. After the game I went mad at the players, saying they’d stopped doing what we’d been working on. I was more frustrated with my assistant manager, who was on the side while I was in the heat of battle having to deal with long balls and so on.
“But afterwards I realised, ‘Actually, that was my fault. I shouldn’t be playing any more. I need to try and help my players from the sideline’. I’ve made that conscious effort to step back, because I want to manage a long time.”
It is clear Murphy has given much thought to the many aspects of the job, and this turns out to have been a long-standing journey. “When I was a young player at Blackburn Rovers, after coming over from Ireland, I kept a little diary of training sessions, because coaching was something I was interested in even then,” he says.
“I wouldn’t say I had a vision of being a manager at that age, but whenever a coach would be talking, I can remember thinking, ‘Maybe you should have said it this way’, or ‘That was effective’. When I’d had good or tough sessions, I’d write them down, thinking they might be good for the future.”
Does he still have the old diaries? “I do. I don’t really look at them but I found one recently. There were sessions in it but also mentality things as well. Physical stuff, gym sessions, mentality quotes.”
Murphy had to be focused to build a career in the first place after joining Carlisle from Blackburn under Roddy Collins in 2001. He survived turbulent United times to emerge as a club legend, playing in a host of positions. The determined side of his nature is deep-rooted.
“When I was in Ireland, about 13 or 14, there was never anything in my mind that I could get over to England and play for professional teams. I just played for the love of playing. I would be out on the streets for hours on end. There was an older lad, who is now my sister’s partner, who was the best footballer on our street and someone I looked up to.
“When I used to play [with him], all the older lads in the neighbourhood would kick lumps out of me. I’d end up crying, and every five minutes they’d smash me again. Maybe that teaches you a bit of resilience, because there was nobody gonna help me at that point: I had to stand up for myself, keep getting back up.”
Murphy also showed resilience in his junior club days. “I grew up in a place called Ballybrack, the south side of Dublin. It was quite a tough area; when you went through a different neighbourhood, they’d look at you and you knew you’d have to get out sharply or stick up for yourself. When I went to football I had to walk through four or five of those neighbourhoods, so when coming home after training at night time I had to look out.”
Murphy played for Ballybrack Boys for several years, but a change of manager saw things dwindle at the club. “Someone else took over, just a dad, and it ended up that me and a few friends always had to call into their house to see if they were coming training. If they weren’t, I would take the balls down and just get a kickaround with the players that did turn up.
“It faded away. Players weren’t turning up. I said to my mother that I just wanted to play football, so I went to our local rivals, St Joseph’s Boys. I’d already signed with Ballybreck for the season but there was no training, no matches. I went to St Joseph’s and that’s how I ended up going to England.”
Murphy says that, when he returned to Ballybreck for a prizegiving ceremony years later, there were “a couple of comments” about him jumping ship, but by then his course was clear – and his decision bearing out in terms of a professional career.
As for management, the job can torture even the most stable minds, but Murphy says he keeps control away from the game. “It’s very easy,” he says when I ask him if he unwinds. “Not on a Saturday night after the game, but otherwise…I’m not dictated to by football. I love football, but when I step away from it, I’ve got my family, my kids, my friends and life outside football, which I think is very healthy. I can switch off from it.
“I’m sure my wife [Lisa] would think differently when I’ve come home and I’m raging about a game, or overthinking everything that’s happened in training. She can be asleep and I’m going over these things in my mind. But Sunday is my day with the kids [Oscar and Halle], and I do believe if I didn’t have football it wouldn’t be the be-all and end-all.”
The idea of emotional balance among players is very much the remit of a modern manager. Murphy feels the sport can do more to help young players who drop out of academies and struggle with the transition, and he explains at length how he has had to handle certain players of different states of fragility and mental health.
Those names and details are not for sharing publicly – but Murphy is open about his management ambitions. His day job is for West Coast Blinds but he says: “If I was honest, football is something that I would love to do full-time. I’d love to get as high as I can and achieve, and I sincerely believe that I will.”
Does he have particular goals? “There’s a vision in my mind. It is not one certain club, but it’s winning, and me and the players all holding up trophies. And that will happen. I also want to manage for my future. You see all these older managers now into their seventies and I can see myself doing that.
“I love it. I’ve got a lot of energy for it.”
Murphy, like much of his playing career, does not have an agent and nor does he brazenly covet other roles. But he feels success with Annan would be a surefire way of getting noticed.
He talks about the touchstones of his management. “The way I want a Peter Murphy team to play is for my players to work really hard and trust each other. There’s a certain way in which I want to play, but you can’t always play that way.
“Every couple of years my way of playing has to change – if you don’t have the luxury of affording to bring in the very best players all the time, you have to be that way – but the fundamental principles don’t change. That’s my philosophy – how can I get the best out of my players in the fundamental structure I want to work at?”
Asked if he misses playing, Murphy admits he “loved” getting his boots on in a midfield capacity against Brechin City last season when other players needed a break amid a hectic post-Covid run. It was his first appearance for four years, while he says he keeps himself in good condition and gets his “fix” by joining in training. But he adds: “If I played on Saturday I don’t think I would manage very well, and that’s my priority.”
Murphy, who has added sports science and GPS units to help Annan, is ready for the inevitable question about whether he could see himself managing Carlisle one day. He is a hugely popular figure in the club’s history; their longest-serving outfield player who scored huge goals to win the 2005 Conference play-off final and 2011’s Johnstone’s Paint Trophy final.
“I was very fortunate to be at the club for 12 years and, in my mind, yes, I would love to manage Carlisle – but if that ever did happen I would be going back as a manager, and whatever I’d done there before as a player wouldn’t matter,” he says. "Especially if I was a month in and hadn't won any games.
"If I’m totally honest, though, I want to manage a lot higher. I don’t mean to sound disrespectful to Carlisle, but that [higher] is where I want to be and where I envisage myself being.”
Other than a framed Ireland jersey (he was capped by the Republic against Bolivia in 2007) which he recently brought in from the garage amid some renovations, Murphy has little evidence of his career on display at home. Again, this shines light on the outlook of the man preparing to take on Rangers.
“Everything’s up in my loft, in a bag,” he says. “It’s great I’ve got things to look back on, but I’m looking forward. All that’s history. Can I create some new history?”
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