Former Australian Sevens captain Damon Murphy has experienced a rapid rise throughout the refereeing ranks after being convinced to take up the role at a wedding.
In partnership with FedEx, who are the Official Referee Partners of Super Rugby, Murphy sat down with Rugbycomau to talk about his rise, refereeing a gold medal match and his advice for emerging referees as he prepares to take control of the third Bledisloe Test.
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Your path was a little different to most coming through as a Sevens player and captain. How did you first get into referring?
It was actually Nic Berry that got me in refereeing at a wedding. He somehow convinced me to give it a go at the wedding, but I had been asked a couple of times prior to that meeting by (National Referee Manager) Scott Young and (Match Officials Manager) Rohan Hoffman and a couple of the Rugby Australia employees but it was Nic who convinced me after a few beers at the wedding.
(The) first game was at Albury Creek. It was a trial Colts game between GPS and Easts in 2016. That was my very first game as a referee and it kind of just went from there and it went up the ranks. It was Colts 2 in Queensland so it would’ve been third-grade Colts so it was very much bottom of the barrel. Then they sent out Dick Byers, a former test referee who was a referee coach and he watched me and gave a couple of tips. I then did 5th Grade the next week and just worked my way up from there through the grades and by the end of the first year, I finished off doing a Premier first grade game in Queensland and some NRC games.
What is your favourite memory as a referee?
I’m not sure I have a favourite memory as a referee, it’s all happened so quickly but there have been some very satisfying moments. To name a couple, doing my first Super Rugby game was very satisfying, doing my first Tier one Test between New Zealand and Fiji and probably the most recent one was doing the gold medal match at the Tokyo Olympics.
I don’t go out there and referee for the accolades, you set yourself goals and you go along. I don’t set appointment goals, to be recognised and given those opportunities I think is a reflection of all the hard work that we put in and all that stuff is very unbeknown to people. People don’t quite understand the work referees do in Super Rugby and in Australia/New Zealand put into it.
Stepping up for the gold medal match, there’s not many people that can say they’ve refereed an Olympics deciding a gold medal. Can you talk about that experience and how it all came about?
The way it works is they do it in a four-year cycle over the World Sevens Series and at the start of each cycle, (Referee coach) Paddy O’Brien and (Referee manager) Craig Joubert will make the selections. They started with 25 from around the world and what they do each year based on performance, they cut the squad down until the final year which was 2020 to ten referees and those ten are appointed to the Olympics.
From there, you get rated in either top, middle and bottom group and from that, you get appointed to specific games through the weekend and it’s all based on performance. At the end of it, someone thought I had done well enough and I got appointed to the gold medal game.
When you talk about your memories and moments like the gold medal match, what stands out as the most satisfying aspect of being a referee?
The most satisfying thing is that we’re very lucky in Australia to have such a good group of referees. (National Referee Coach) Mitch Chapman and Scott Young have worked really well to create a good group. So, to be a part of that process has been very satisfying.
For me, as a referee, it’s not about the appointments. It’s more about refereeing the game almost so you do it a way that you go unnoticed or you need to be noticed and you are refereeing the game the way it should be so it’s a fair spectacle for both teams. I think that’s the biggest misconception and we’re all guilty of that when I’ve played or anyone has and you only watch a game from one side because that’s your team. I always tell people to watch a game in Europe or somewhere where you don’t care about the teams and tell me how much you notice the referee.
It’s more around doing the right thing for the game. We don’t go out to give red cards, try and steal the spotlight. Ideally, I’d like to do nothing but unfortunately in the role we do, we have to make decisions and sometimes those decisions are interpreted differently. But I think the most satisfying thing is walking off the field knowing that you refereed the game and you contributed to the game that allowed for a fair contest. Along with that, the group with Rugby Australia that I get to work with every week is very satisfying.
As the Official Referee Partner in Super Rugby, FedEx strives to provide a pathway for referees like yourself. How has the FedEx program helped deliver those opportunities for referees coming through the ranks
The way it has worked is that each state has their own association and then what happens you go well in your area and doing premier rugby, that creates interest from the professional and high-performance program and Mitch Chapman would be the main guy keeping his ear on the ground for talent and go through that pathway backed by FedEx. He knows what World Rugby are looking for in referees so he’s looking through the ranks.
From there, you get selected and the next step is you would do either NRC when it was around or run touch in a Super Rugby, that could fall on someone like a Reuben Keane to be a Super ref of the future. You would then move into someone like Jordie Way who’s done Sevens for five years and refereed Super Rugby, knocking at the door to take the next step and then you get to that next step like Nic Berry and doing Lions Tests.
Making the jumps through the ranks, has being a referee potentially going through the pathways given you opportunities that maybe you might not have had as a player?
It’s given me different opportunities. It’s very unique in that it gives you the opportunity to meet referees across the world and I can sit here today and say I have mates from 6-7 different countries around the world that we talk to regularly. As a player, you don’t have the ability to form those relationships, I could be working with some of those guys in South Africa or Argentina depending on the appointment schedule.
From a Rugby point of view, the opportunities are what you make of it. When you get an opportunity, you have to grasp it with both hands. Whether there is a difference between Rugby and refereeing, an opportunity is an opportunity so there is no real difference, but they all exist and that’s the wonderful thing about Rugby, it’s a world game with opportunities.
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When you talk about opportunities there’s none bigger than a potential home 2027 World Cup and Olympics in 2032, what advice would you give to any aspiring referee who may be aiming to officiate down the track in ’27 or at the rugby 7s at Brisbane 2032?
It’s like anything, selections will take care of themselves, but you just have to go away and do the hard work and focus and figure out what you need to do to make yourself a better player and referee. I always believe the selection part will take care of itself as long as you take care of your part of the bargain and doing the stuff behind the scenes.
This week you have a big appointment in the third Bledisloe Cup, what does the preparation look like in the lead-up
It starts out quite broad, I’ve already had a conversation with Mitch who’s my coach three or four times already, just getting our head around the different scenarios that have popped up in the previous two Tests and what I need to do to contribute to the game.
What happens from there, we’ve already got cut clips that we’re watching from the previous games and we then wait for the teams to be named. Once they are named, we can then delve into each player and what they do/don’t do especially. In the end, every rugby game I’ve played, every game I’ve refereed, there’s never been two games the same, you can do all the preparation you can but you can go out on the day but you make decisions on what you see and react to the situations presented to you.
That’s the thing you can't really prepare for, these things happen in split seconds and you have to react to them.
