Murphy’s law: The cases outgoing NRL integrity unit boss will never forget | proshenks
During her seven years working in the NRL’s integrity unit, Karyn Murphy owned two phones.
“I should have been more creative,” Murphy says with a laugh. “It’s a louder tone, so I know it’s that phone. Sometimes you don’t know whether to answer it or not, but you always do.” However, the fallout from some of the matters continued for years, such as the sexual assault allegations levelled at Jarryd Hayne and Jack de Belin , or the emergence of the Tyrone May sex tapes.
“Sometimes there were multiple [incidents] in a day. At the integrity office we tend to have our holidays over that Christmas period, but you can never say you have a full holiday, you’re always on your phone working.” “You never know on any day when the phone is going to ring and what’s going to turn that day, that week or that month or two upside down with whatever it might be.
The unit holds footballers, governed by the law and also the NRL’s code of conduct, to a standard higher than the rest of society. Given the cohort is, for the most part, aged in their teens or twenties and has copious amounts of time and money, the vast majority are of exemplary behaviour. Murphy deals with the exceptions.“In policing you’ve got the law and those things you follow and in the NRL you have your NRL rules,” she says. “The difference is that nothing is black and white.