Mad Stad Legends – Graeme Murty

Part three of our Madejski Stadium era Reading FC legends series sees Jon Keen nominate Graeme Murty.

When Tommy Burns bought a virtually unknown winger from York City for the sum of £700,000 at the end of the 1997/98 season, no-one could have known just how far that player, Graeme Murty, and Reading FC would travel together and how he would truly become a Mad Stad Legend.

Graeme Murty

That outcome seemed even more unlikely, because although we got a glimpse of Graeme in one of the last testimonial matches at Elm Park that first summer, he then disappeared into the obscurity of the treatment room, earning the soubriquet “the lesser-spotted Murty.”   We didn’t see him again until February 1999, when he had a brief run of 9 matches in six weeks before a hard tackle away at Luton again sent him back to the treatment table and we didn’t see him again for another seven months.

As Graeme’s injury problems persisted he played only 59 matches in those first three seasons, but a change was to come.  I’m sure it’s no coincidence that the first season where Graeme – now injury free and converted to a right-back – was virtually ever present was the season in which Reading gained promotion back to Tier Two in that thriller at Brentford.

Now a permanent fixture in the team, Graeme was made captain in February 2003 when Phil Parkinson left to manage Colchester, and it’s for his influence as a captain – off the pitch as well as on it– during what was the most dramatic and the most successful period in Reading’s whole history that Graeme is right at the top of my list of Reading legends.

Graeme celebrating with The Football League Championship Trophy

We all know how Steve Coppell’s team swept all before them in 2006 and over-achieved in the Premier League the following season – this was the zenith of Graeme’s career here.  As remarkable things were happening to the club, he was always there, a mature and sensible voice, quietly representing Reading and dampening down the over-hype and excesses of the Premier League.  At a time when many feared we’d turn into a club full of Premier League prima-donnas he was always a wonderful calming influence – the perfect captain of that team, if Steve Coppell was that team’s brains, Graeme was its heart and its conscience.  He was Steve Coppell’s lieutenant on the pitch, doing things in exactly the same quiet, sensible and no-nonsense way that was the Gaffer’s modus operandi.

Those who might scoff at his on-field achievements are the same ones who automatically vote for the top goal-scorer in player of the season votes – those who tend miss the finer points of defending and tend not to notice a player who just quietly and undramatically gets on with the job of defending without making a song and dance about it.  For that’s what Graeme did – just quietly got on with the job, giving everything he could, and also rising to the challenge every time a contender for the right back slot emerged.

But as well as doing his own job well, there can be no doubt that his influence on the rest of the defence was immense.  When he missed a match, it was noticeable that the back four didn’t quite work as well together and that the off-side trap became that little bit more ragged, and, sometimes, that the whole team was a little bit less disciplined and less well organised.

So while all the other Mad Stad legends will be nominated for what they did on the pitch, I regard Graeme as my ultimate Mad Stad Legend not just for his own play, but for how he improved the play of the whole team, and not just for what happened on the pitch but for his behevaiour off it as captain during that unbelievable time. But there are also a couple of other reasons for nominating him.

Firstly, I was lucky to meet him a number of times during his time as captain, and I can testify that he is a thoroughly nice bloke – almost the exact opposite of the stereotype of a Premier League footballer.  At the time the club most needed one, he was a vital link between team and supporters and was at all times a consummate professional – and that’s even before we mention all the charity and other activities he was involved in through the “Royals Families.”

That unforgettable penalty.

And if none of the above has convinced you just how much of a MadStad legend he is, then surely the events of just one match will do it – Sunday 30^th April 2006, home to QPR.  For me, this match summed up everything that was great about that astonishing promotion season, but if you’d gone to Hollywood and pitched to a studio how the events of that day would unfold they’d have sent you away because no-one would believe the story.  A quite extraordinary match at the end of a quite extraordinary season, and when I’m lying on my deathbed, sans hair, sans teeth, sans everything, that match will be the last one I remember as my brain switches off.  And Graeme Murty is as central to that amazing match as he is to that amazing season and to that most astounding and triumphant period in Reading’s history.