Former Wakefield flyer Lewis Murphy says he is bigger and better for his year in Sydney as he returns to Super League with St Helens.
WIND the clock back to the beginning of 2023 and the career of Lewis Murphy was looking very good indeed.
Murphy was 20 years of age and fresh off a stellar debut season at Wakefield, scoring 19 tries in 24 appearances to help them avoid relegation from Super League.
“Looking back at it now, I wish I took it in more,” he tells Rugby League World.
“At the time it’s week after week so I wasn’t really thinking about it. Now it’s all done I do look on it fondly. It was a really good time.”
Then came an approach from one of the world’s biggest clubs, as he signed a deal with Sydney Roosters to move to Australia for the following season and chance his arm in the NRL.
But rugby league has a knack of delivering cruel blows. Three weeks into the season and exactly a year to the day from his professional debut against Leeds, Murphy suffered a dreaded anterior cruciate ligament injury against Huddersfield.
Not only was his time with Trinity, where he came through the academy, over in one swift stroke, but his task of cracking the NRL became a whole lot more difficult too.
Recovery from knee surgery took him through the rest of the year at Wakefield, 2024 pre-season with the Roosters and the opening weeks of the Australian season.
Murphy returned after more than twelve months out for their New South Wales Cup team, going on to make seven appearances in the second tier and score a try in the sole win.
“I didn’t get to play NRL which was one of my goals,” he says in reflection from back in England, where he has signed a two-year contract to resume his Super League career with St Helens.
“My ACL happened before I went to Australia and I didn’t know I’d be going off the back of an ACL so that made it a bit tough.
“But then my goal kind of changed to just getting back fit, getting ready and seeing what happens from there.”
Without the extra baggage of injury, it’s a big move for a player so young to head to Australia, albeit an increasingly common one – Kai Pearce-Paul and Will Pryce moved from Super League at the same time, while Matty Nicholson and Lewis Dodd have done likewise in this off-season.
But it’s a journey that Murphy is glad he made with his girlfriend for more reasons than one.
“It was big for me personally and big for me rugby-wise, going from Wakefield to Sydney,” he says.
“I learned a lot about myself and also learned a lot about rugby league. I really enjoyed it and I’m grateful for the experience over there.
“It was beautiful. The lifestyle is great. It is pretty similar to England to be honest, it’s like a sunny England so everyone’s a bit happier!
“Some of the friends I made over there I’ll miss, and probably the weather and the beaches as well. I spent too much time on the beaches!”
Make no mistakes, plenty of hard work went in too, and Murphy believes he returns to England a much better player for having a year training with the Roosters, whose star-studded squad finished third and reached the preliminary finals in 2024.
“It was quite surreal training with these elite athletes, and they became my friends as well,” says Murphy, who was also taken under the wing – pardon the pun – of the Roosters’ reserve coach Brett Morris, a prolific wideman in his own playing career with 23 Kangaroos tries.
“Every single day I was trying to learn from the likes of Daniel Tupou and Joseph Suaali’i. They’re great players.
“The training sessions and particularly the wrestle sessions were the most intense I’ve ever done. I can only get better from doing that.”
His biggest areas of improvement? “I’d probably say the wrestle, and the defence side of things. Attack is more about your own qualities and what you bring yourself, but in defence I reckon I’ve got better.
“At Wakefield I was one of the strongest, but I went to being one of the weakest! I had to learn a lot and get quite strong when I was at the Roosters. I’ve put on about 5kg of weight. I feel stronger now.”
It certainly suggests that Super League should prepare for a bigger and better version of the Murphy who broke onto the scene at Belle Vue three seasons ago.
Looking back over all his tries in the 2022 season and the quality of the finishes is striking. Almost all saw him beat players in open play through his rapid pace and elusive footwork or, most commonly, dive spectacularly into the corner when there appears almost no space to do so.
If rugby league recorded ‘expected tries’ stats like football does for goals, Murphy would surely have outperformed his figure quite comfortably, and it’s easy to see how he scored 19 tries in a poor side for which nobody else managed more than eight.
Saints fans may remember his talent all too well. In the penultimate game of that campaign, he scored four tries at the Totally Wicked Stadium to inflict the eventual champions’ only home defeat of the year.
Now he’s dreaming of scoring many more tries on that turf – but first, and quite understandably after two challenging years, he just wants to be playing at all.
“I’ve loved it here, especially the last two weeks,” says Murphy, one of three new signings for a St Helens team desperate to improve on a sorry 2024 alongside “very vocal” fellow winger Kyle Feldt, North Queensland Cowboys’ record try-scorer, and halfback Tristan Sailor from Brisbane Broncos.
“We’re really starting to gel together and get the combinations going so I’m starting to really enjoy it.
“There are loads of experienced players here who have won plenty of trophies. I know the team I’m going to is fighting for trophies every year. I know the standard that they expect.
“I want to just play as many first-team games as I can, and hopefully score a lot of tries as well.”
First published in Rugby League World magazine, Issue 504 (January 2025)
