Player privacy will surely only increase after Murray saga

The Conor Murray saga, such as it is, kicked off again last week with his words at a function in Limerick where he spoke about his “hurt” at the rumours that swirled around him in the aftermath of his decision to keep the details his neck injury private.

Personally speaking, I cannot understand the furore around Conor Murray deciding to keep the details of his injury private.

First of all, it’s quite literally his business. The public reporting of injuries make insurance more difficult to obtain for regular players and that goes double for high profile, highly paid players like Conor Murray.

So if you have a general query as to why he didn’t just reveal his injury and be done with it, there’s one practical reason. If that won’t do it for you, just from a media management perspective.

Another big reason is that he just didn’t know for sure how long he’d be out with the injury, so any details he gave out publicly would have to be followed by a “how long will you be out for Conor?” question that he just couldn’t answer truthfully.

Sure, he could say something like “two months” and then, two months later, the neck might not be ready for contact, let alone a game, and then you’ve more questions to answer.

Murray himself said this in October; “The reason we kept it quiet at the start is because we didn’t know what it was. We couldn’t put a date on it. That was my whole thinking behind it, it wasn’t ever the whole data protection or me keeping it secret.”

Just remember how people started to talk about Tyler Bleyendaal when he missed months and a fair few injury deadlines with a quad injury that just wouldn’t heal, or how people talked about Paul O’Connell when he had his Osteitis Pubis.

The O’Connell incident is the most compelling case for Murray’s privacy. O’Connell detailed in his autobiography ‘The Battle’ how he had to deal with people speculating that he had a much more serious disease than Osteitis Pubis, even going so far as having to contact a prominent website to remove posts speculating on it. 

O’Connell’s injury was well covered at the time but even with this wealth of information in the public domain, the crazy speculation wouldn’t be contained.

And that leads us to the rumours about Murray and the following quite. “The toughest part of this was the outside rumours that my friends and family would hear.

“Crazy stuff that I’d failed all sorts of drugs tests and they were just keeping it under wraps and letting me serve my ban. That kind of hurt a little bit,” he said.

And it was this “hurt” that lead to a flurry of takes from journalists and a piece by David Kelly in the Independent.

“What else did Murray expect?” is the general tone of these pieces, as if keeping the details of his injury private was somehow an invitation for the worst kind of speculation to spread around internet forums and Whatsapp groups.

Accessible information didn’t stop rumours spreading about O’Connell and the idea that Murray showing everyone his MRI scans would somehow prevent people from crafting stories to show how “in the know” they are to their gullible mates on forums is risible.

The rumours weren’t just contained to forums, either. They were given a little more weight by nods and winks by a journalist published in and promoted by the Irish Independent on his Twitter account which seemed to imply he knew things about this situation that he could never write about. 

What do you think an observer of this reply might think? What could a journalist know but never write about? What kind of juicy rumour is this?!

The idea that players – or anyone, really – who choose not to reveal information about themselves publicly should think twice for fear of what people will make up in an “information vacuum” is a dangerous concept.

Everyone is entitled to keep their information to themselves and implying that you should tell people everything to avoid rumours being made up about you is as wrongheaded as it gets.

It didn’t stop the rumours about O’Connell and ultimately, if people have an axe to grind they’ll make up whatever they want.

When a player is that high profile in Ireland – Murray is at the level of an O’Connell at this stage – then people will want to believe the worst.

Conor Murray is a well-paid, famous athlete but that does not entitle anyone to information about him that he does not want revealed. It’s as simple as that.

If you buy a ticket to Thomond Park or a jersey or a Conor Murray poster all it entitles you to is to see a game, to wear a shirt or to look at a picture on your wall. That’s where your entitlement ends.

The anger from the press is something I can understand. Being out of the loop never feels good but that still does not entitle them to fuel speculation irresponsibly, as many did with their propagation of the “mystery” surrounding the injury. There was no mystery.

You knew Murray was injured and you knew that he would be out for around four months because of the signing of Mathewson as cover for the scrumhalf position.

Charlie Mulqueen in the Examiner knew it was a neck injury on the 28th of August 2018 so you’d presume that the rest of the press corps would have known the same thing – and if not, why not?

Ultimately, the transparency argument asks us to believe that if Murray simply came out and said “it’s a neck injury” and “I’m not quite sure when I’ll be back, to be honest” that this would have stopped the speculation that ran rampant in the aftermath.

I don’t buy it. Because releasing bare minimum information – back injury with an indeterminate recovery point – didn’t stop Jamie Heaslip from enduring Chinese whispers.

It didn’t stop O’Connell from receiving the same.  Other high profile players will realise this sooner or later too and I, personally, can’t wait.