In 1971, he responded to a request from a New Zealand journalist for an interview by inviting him into the changing room, then holding the man under a shower until he was drenched.
[4] He scored the All Blacks' only try in their 1972 win against Wales in Cardiff, but later the same night was involved in a fracas in which he punched security guard Peter Grant at the Angel Hotel.
[1] However, in 2019, Moyra Pearce, the daughter of Ernie Todd who was the manager of the 1972 tour, stated that Murdoch was not – as had always been alleged – sent home for assaulting a security guard.
Murdoch lived for a year in New Zealand in the mid-1970s, working as a bushman in a job organised by former All Black teammate Graham Whiting.
[10] In 1980, Murdoch was back in New Zealand, working on an Otago farm when he saved a 3-year-old child from drowning in a backyard swimming pool by providing mouth-to-mouth resuscitation.
[2] In 2001 Murdoch came to public attention in connection with an inquest into the death of an Aboriginal man, Christopher Kumanjai Limerick, who was found dead at an abandoned mine.
The coroner suspected that he may have been forcibly taken from the town of Tennant Creek and abandoned at the mine in the heat without food or water, saying that there was evidence of assault.
Police eventually tracked him down to a remote cattle station hundreds of miles away, and he came to give evidence, refusing all questions from reporters.