by
Norman Freeman
The story of the Archdeacon Murphy Cup
The unusual story of the Archdeacon Murphy Cup has been kept completely under wraps for almost forty years. Little wonder. In the first place, there was acute embarrassment at the foolish way this hard-won trophy went missing. Then those who lost it replaced it with a bogus trophy without telling anybody. More than that however, there was a disreputable history surrounding the look-alike trophy that everybody thought was the Archdeacon Murphy Cup.

The original cup was presented to the county hurling board many years ago as a trophy for the winners of the junior hurling championship each year. It has to be said that this was quite a modest cup, although it was made of silver. At the time the joke was that the captain of the winning side would be able to lift it with his little finger when it was handed to him after the final. It was not even engraved. However, in those days people were afraid to make any adverse comment on it, since Archdeacon Murphy was a powerful cleric who sometimes doubled as the town bully.

One Sunday in September in 1964 the cup was won for the first time by a junior club from a small parish after a long and hard campaign that included two replays.

The delighted club members organised a huge celebration in their community centre for the following night. The captain of the team, Frankie H, was entrusted with looking after the cup. On the Monday afternoon he and a team-mate drove along towards the venue. Both were in great form, since their celebrations had lasted well into the small hours.

When they were passing through a village whose team were bitter rivals, the captain couldn’t resist the impulse to hold the cup out the window, while the driver blew triumphantly on the horn.

Then disaster! So vigorously did the captain wave the cup about that it fell out of his hand. It bounced along the street with a clanging sound. The car came to a screeching halt and the two fellows ran back to retrieve the trophy. It could not be found. The only person they saw was a white-haired woman who was standing at her door looking about.

‘Oh I heard some noise all right and came to the door. I saw nothing,’ she said sympathetically.

The two fellows were in a bad state. They ran into the two pubs and the supermarket looking about and calling out ‘Did anyone see or find a silver cup?’ Nobody could help them.

They were in a quandary. They wondered if they could they find some kind of a replacement. One that might pass muster at the night’s celebrations. They might have to try to buy one although neither had the kind of money that would be required for a silver cup.

Then, in desperation, the captain thought of a fellow nicknamed Johnny Jack. He was an eccentric man who dealt in all kinds of odds and ends. His shed on the main street of a nearby town was a dusty, murky Aladdin’s cave of an incredible variety of items, from ancient muskets, to hunting horns, to ornamental lamps, camel saddles, scimitars and God knows what else. In fact, this man and his astonishing variety of oddities featured on the RTE Nationwide programme.

A photograph of the Archdeacon Murphy cup had been on the sports pages of the local newspaper and the captain had this with him when the two approached Johnny Jack. They told him the full story in confidence. This sun-browned man, who had a wild look about him and long white hair, looked long at the newspaper photograph. Then he said: ‘I think I might have the answer to your problem. But it’s between us it is, do you understand?’ They nodded hopefully. Johnny Jack told them to stay where they were while he went down to the far end of the dark shed. There he rooted about. They could make out him lifting a sack and then taking out something which he then brought to his work desk beside the cobwebbed window. It was a trophy much like the one they had so foolishly lost.

They watched from a distance as this strange man removed a polished mahogany base, with a silver engraved plate attached to it from the trophy. He polished it and then brought it to them. It looked almost the same as the missing trophy.

‘I won’t charge you for this,’ he said, handing it to the captain. ‘But don’t say a word to anyone – otherwise we’ll all be in trouble.’ They were a bit uneasy at this, even though they were relieved as they took the bogus trophy away.

Nobody at the celebrations or the club noticed in the slightest that it might have been anyway different. It was given an honoured place on a shelf in the bar of the clubhouse. As far as anyone was concerned this was the Archdeacon Murphy Cup and it was passed on from year to year to the winners of the junior hurling championship.

However, Frankie H was always intrigued by the cup and was dying to know its origin. It was several years later that he was told in utmost confidence by Johnny Jack that it had been among a number of valuables stolen from Castledifflin, the home of Sir Frederick Darges. This stalwart came from on old Anglo-Irish family that claimed a relationship with the Tudor dynasty.

When he died some years later, the London Daily Telegraph carried an obituary that cast further light on the trophy. It described Sir Frederick as having been ‘wild and dissolute’ as a young man. Some time in the 1930’s Sir Frederick obtained a commission in the British army and, with his cavalry regiment, was posted to India. He was an expert horseman. One sweltering afternoon, on a dusty maidan, before a large gathering, he competed in that brutal and dangerous sport – pig-sticking. Powerful, heavy boars, with fearsome tusks were goaded cruelly, but sometimes charged their tormentor, knocking horse and rider to the ground. Sir Frederick won the competition on behalf of his regiment and was handed the cup by the Maharajah of Guttapur.

Not a month later that cup, along with a lot of the regimental silver disappeared overnight from the officers’ mess. Immediately an investigation was set in train. The first instinct, of course, was to suspect some of the ‘natives’ who served at table in the mess. They were closely questioned. Under pressure one of them confessed that, on the secret instructions of Sir Frederick, he had taken the items to a high-class brothel. They were given as a means of payment by Sir Frederick, who was a regular patron of this establishment and had run up sizeable debts.

The cup was retrieved and so was most of the silver, with the regiment paying what was owed to the manager of the brothel.

This was the end of Sir Frederick’s army career. Regular visitations to a high-class brothel was one thing, but stealing regimental silver was quite another. He was arraigned before a military tribunal and given a dishonourable discharge. It was felt that the cup he had won had been sullied and he was given it to take with him. It was in his baggage as he boarded one of the P&O passenger ships in Bombay (now Mumbai).

When he arrived back in Ireland he took up farming and became a popular figure. One thing that endeared him to the local populace was that he donated up to fifty well-matured ash trees from his estate for the making of hurleys. He also signed over a flat, well-drained field to the local club. It is not far from the club grounds and to this day is used for practice and juvenile games.

He was welcomed back into the British Army when World War II broke out. He was wounded in the North African campaign where, ironically for someone of his passionate disposition, he suffered the loss of a testicle.

Actually, there was an unusual post-script to this saga. About ten years after the original cup went missing Frank H said he is certain he saw it at one of the leading flower shows in the country. His wife, a keen floral gardener, had exhibited several plants at the show. When Frank was strolling rou