NEW light has been shed on the mysterious life of legendary All Black Keith Murdoch.

PerthNow’s revelations last week about the last decade of Murdoch’s secret WA life sparked responses from around the globe, with past work mates slowly adding pieces to a puzzle that has enthralled world rugby for more than four decades.

One former colleague who worked with Murdoch both before and after he was sent home in disgrace from the All Black’s 1972 UK Tour claims;

• Murdoch told him he punched the security guard in the kitchen of the infamous Angel Hotel in Cardiff only after he called Murdoch a “Kiwi pig”.

• It was the security guard’s wife, and not the guard, who ultimately forced the New Zealand Rugby Union to buckle to English pressure and send Murdoch packing.

• Murdoch pleaded with the rest of the All Blacks to continue the tour and talked them out of going on strike.

Another workmate corroborates claims Murdoch worked for some years in the heart of WA’s Pilbara maintaining the remote 430km rail line between Port Hedland and Newman.

Murdoch vanished into the Australian outback after swapping planes in Singapore and ended up in WA, keen to avoid the waiting media scrum in Auckland after his spectacular demise.

Kiwi journalists who elicited little from him tracked him down a few times over the decades.

Murdoch’s best mate of his last 10 years, Dean Parry, a Carnarvon local who he drank with most afternoons at the Gascoyne Hotel a nine-hour drive north of Perth, had no idea who Murdoch was.

Murdoch kept his past secret and it was only after he died in February this year that Parry—who Murdoch appointed next of kin—and the entire WA coastal town—discovered Murdoch’s true identity.

However, Errol May, a retired merchant seaman now living in Chang Mai, Thailand, worked with Murdoch twice—once in outback Queensland before Murdoch became an All Black, and again in WA’s Pilbara just after Murdoch had been kicked off the infamous tour.

May worked in a lead smelter with Murdoch in Mt Isa in 1966 for some months during the NZ rugby off-season. He was bagging lead concentrate and the two men—both in their early 20s—worked hard and enjoyed a beer.

“I remember someone asking him back then if he wanted to come and have a game with the local rugby league team, but he wasn’t interested,” May told PerthNow.

“He said he was heading home to play rugby, to be an All Black, and that’s what he did.”

It was not until 1973 when the pair caught up again, this time in WA’s remote Pilbara. Murdoch was working with crews that maintained the rail line that linked BHP’s iron ore operations in Newman with Port Hedland, 1300km north of Perth.

The camps were spread along the massive track and usually had about 30-40 men in them, a boisterous wet mess, a busy kitchen and very basic accommodation.

“He enjoyed a beer and a good time, like we all did, but he never went looking for trouble,” he said.

“He was a quiet man. I never saw him pick a fight, although, to be honest, I did see him finish a few.

“He was a great bloke, a knockabout. He was handsome and the chicks would swarm around him, they loved him, but he was always humble and polite.”

May said Murdoch, with whom he once shared a caravan, spoke to him about the Cardiff incident once and never raised it again.

“I remember him vividly telling me that the only reason he came across this bloke was because he went looking for something to eat in the galley (of the hotel),” he said.

“He told me that the security bloke appeared and apparently said to them, ‘you get out of here, you Kiwi pig’. Well, that was enough for Keith. He flattened him.

“I always remember him saying the Kiwi pig thing. That sort of stuck with me.

“He did tell me that in the end, the guard was okay with everything, but it was his wife who was pushing for action. She wanted to take some sort of civil action against him.”

According to May, Murdoch told him that he pleaded with Ian Kirkpatrick, the All Black skipper, not to go on strike after players threatened to revolt and go home.

The skipper reluctantly relented, May said Murdoch told him.

Murdoch was a genuine man who “did a lot of favours for a lot of people” in the time that he knew him.

“He was a decent bloke with a good heart,” he said.

Jim Ward, who also worked with Murdoch at Newman midway through 1973, confirmed that Murdoch had lived in various camps along the remote rail line.

“He was living at one of the camps out on the rail line and we’d catch up when I was dropping off something for the maintenance crews, sleepers, that sort of thing,” May said.

Unlike the last decade of his life, the men who worked and drank with Murdoch back in the 1970s knew who he was.

“He was a relatively quiet bloke, but everyone knew who he was. He was the All Black. He never spoke to me about what had happened over in the UK,” he said.

“There were a heap of Kiwis in the Pilbara back then because when the rail line was first built in 68 or 69 or whenever it was, they brought in plenty of New Zealanders as train drivers.

“One bloke used to occasionally drop off the Otago papers for Keith to keep up to speed with what was going on, I remember, and he had one good mate called Slim Somerville, who he used to play rugby with back home, who was tragically killed on the rail line about 1975.

“But by then Keith had gone. I reckon he shot through sometime in 1974, but I don’t know where he went after the Pilbara.”