Shaun Murphy interview: I became recluse after hopes and dreams died in Crucible's brutal final cut
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Updated 16/04/2016 at 09:55 GMT
Shaun Murphy tells Desmond Kane why the pain of losing does not get any easier to stomach after suffering an agonising 18-15 defeat to Stuart Bingham a year ago in one of the greatest World Championship finals in snooker history.
Shaun Murphy
Image credit: Reuters
As a somewhat learned political aficionado away from potting and plotting success for a living, Shaun Murphy is decidedly undecided on the merits of Brexit.
Yet here is a straight-talking, sober-suited snooker world champion with a keen interest in politics away from his often chaotic calling in life who is also well aware of what constitutes a painful exit. Especially it seems on his annual busman's holiday to Sheffield.
It would not be fraternising with hyperbole to suggest that Murphy's departure from last year's World Championship without taking the final step provided him with a deeper sense of loss than David Cameron will feel if the United Kingdom opts to leave the EU in June.
Murphy was a warm favourite and looked likely before and during his meeting with Stuart Bingham last May only to suffer dismay in coming up agonisingly short. He lost the closing three frames to suffer an 18-15 defeat that probably felt improbable.
The problem for Murphy, suddenly 33 yet still as fresh as a Crucible cloth, was that his mind was still telling him weeks later that he should have snagged his second world gong. He led 3-0 and 8-4, but could not translate desire into fulfilment.
Despite rallying from 15-12 behind to restore parity at 15-15 on closing night, he ultimately failed to add to his solitary success here a decade earlier when he carried off the old pot at the age of 22 as a 150-1 qualifier.
Bingham began as a 50-1 outsider before rampaging past his fellow Englishman in the death throes of a 17-day tournament where the Crucible feels like a sporting torture chamber. For Murphy, the pleasure of losing felt like self-harming.
Yet here he is, back at the scene of the crime where he was mugged live by 'Ball-run' Bingham before hundreds of million viewers around the globe in a match that left him feeling like a recluse. Memories are made of this.
I never left the house for about three weeks after it," he told Eurosport on the cusp of this year's tournament. "I didn't want to leave the house. I just wanted to hide away.
Snooker is a sport that continues to provide its losers with a very real sense of despair when its main protagonists come up short.
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Shaun Murphy is world number three ahead of this year's tournament.
Image credit: Eurosport
Murphy goes by the moniker of "The Magician" due to a voracious appetite for scoring and a technique that makes you wonder how he misses.
But even magicians sometimes struggle to pull the rabbit out of the hat.
Murphy's colours tend to be blue away from the green baize, he misses practice sessions at the Sale Conservative Club near Manchester after relocating to Melton Mowbray in Leicestershire, but nothing can prepare a player for the desolation of feeling blue when they lose.
"People tend to forget when they come here and pay their money to be entertained that we love the sport just as much as they do," said Murphy.
These are our dreams and ambitions on the line. We dreamt of walking into that arena since we were children.
"It is our sacrifices that have got us this far. I gave up school at the age of 13 to be a snooker player.
"There were lots of pressure on family, friends and sponsors, but all those hopes and dreams are wrapped up on that table through those doors.
"To get so close, and to lose is quite difficult to take. "
Snooker has been good to Murphy. It does not provide players with the level of finance of Premier League football, but men like Murphy luxiariate in a sense of self-worth from hours and hours spent in darkened rooms attempting to solve the exacting formula of why snooker at the highest level tends to be settled by the stinging thorn of human error, however small.
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Shaun Murphy and Stuart Bingham during the World Championship final.
Image credit: Eurosport
A winner of the UK Championship, Masters and a haul of six ranking events that has contributed to career earnings of £2.7m over 18 years man and boy, including last month's World Grand Prix when he usurped Bingham for a winner's cheque of £100,000, Murphy would trouser a whopping £330,000 from title sponsors Betfred if he can put the finishing touches to his best laid plans this time.
"Don't get me wrong, we're not digging trenches in the road for a living," commented Murphy.
"We've got a very nice lifestyle, and we are all very thankful for it.
We all enjoy the privileges that come with playing sport for a living. We all appreciate where we are in life, but our hopes and dreams are still wrapped up in winning and losing snooker tournaments.
"We had a great time last year here with family and friends, but I just didn't get to 18 frames before Stuart Bingham. That's what hurt. "
Murphy, the world number three who opens against Anthony McGill in the first round today and tomorrow, is quick to refute claims that he should have landed more than one title in Sheffield over the past 11 years having lost the 2009 final 18-9 to John Higgins.
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Shaun Murphy speaks to Desmond Kane on the eve of this year's World Championship - pic via World Snooker.
Image credit: Eurosport
"I challenge any of those people to walk out in the Crucible Theatre, and try to make more than 10," he points out.
"It is not as easy as we sometimes make it look, and I've been on the backend of the (seven-times champion Stephen) Hendry era and through (five-times winner Ronnie) O'Sullivan's dominance of the noughties.
"I've played in some fantastic matches here, but unfortunately some of them haven't gone my way.
"I've been in two other finals - didn't really take part in the one against Higgins. I didn't really turn up.
"But last year, I was only three frames away from a second world title.
At least I get to say I've got my name on the trophy.
A single handicap golfer and a keen pianist in his spare time after listening to his grandparents rejoice in the art - he likes to revel in a few Elton John songs. Like Elton, he is still standing.
Murphy does not fit the stereotype of snooker being the sign of a misspent youth.
In the same way snooker requires mental fortitude, golf gives players time to ponder their mistakes. Over and over and over again.
He is not alone in feeling a unique sense of desolation having studied Jordan Spieth's collapse at the US Masters last Sunday when the American kid blew a five-shot lead on Augusta's back nine.
Some sports professionals don't ever get over difficult defeats," points out Murphy. "It can be career-defining or career-ending.
"It will be interesting to see how Jordan reacts to such loss. So far in Jordan's young career, it is been very much a success ride.
"By the way, we aren't calling finishing runner up in the Masters a failure, but from being so far ahead he will be very disappointed.
"Sports people are not necessarily defined by how many titles they win. They are also defined by how you cope with defeat.
"We are all capable of winning on our day, but it is how you handed those sour moments, that tells you about a person.
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Shaun Murphy turned professional at the age of 15.
Image credit: Eurosport
"The World Championship is doubly difficult because as soon as the tournament ends, everybody puts their cues down.
"You have a month of so to look yourself in the mirror as a winner or a loser. Don't get the violins for me, but it is a side of the game people don't see.
"We all knew the rules of the game when we got involved in it."
Prior to his latest sojourn to the Steel City of Sheffield, an apt description of what is needed to succeed at a venue where you wish the walls could talk, Murphy was busy studying Question Time on the Beeb to see if he can make sense of the EU referendum.
"I don't think it would change my life much in or out," he comments. "From a snooker point of view, it wouldn't affect me much, but from a selfish point of view it may affect my partner's (Elaine) work so I'd probably prefer to see us stay."
Attempting to right the wrongs of last year will take considerable staying power.
Yet in listening to Murphy it feels like snooker's ongoing World Championship, with all its quirks, foibles and fables, continues to provide a stress test that is about enticing as self-flagellation.
From Desmond Kane at the Crucible Theatre
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