Amanda Landers-Murphy

The triumphs and struggles of Rotorua’s golden squash doubles star 

Words Jill Nicholas

Pictures/Video Stephen Parker

The name Amanda Landers-Murphy is the latest addition to Rotorua’s sporting roll of honour. It’s a place she’s unquestionably earned. 

In August Amanda and her squash doubles partner, Joelle King, smashed their way 

to gold at the Birmingham Commonwealth Games, trouncing England in two straight  games.

It was an achievement that catapulted New Zealand to its record breaking ‘Comms’ gold medal tally of 20. 

Add in 12 silver and 17 bronze and the team came away with 49 medals.

Those stats are already well recorded. What isn’t nearly so well documented is the life and times of Amanda Landers-Murphy. That’s as she likes it.  By her own admission she’s shy, an introvert, someone who shuns the spotlight. Talking about herself is anathema. She fears it makes her sound like a skite. However there isn’t a hint of hubris about this young woman with expressive eyes and a spirit of steel.  

Talk to her in depth, as In Profile has been privileged to, and she gradually allowed herself to defrost. The result is a brutally honest self-appraisal of her involvement in the sport she loves but, at times, has struggled with.

To all intents and purposes she’d retired from the game when King convinced her to again partner her for this year’s major squash events. She used their friendship as leverage. The two are as close off the court as on it. 

Birmingham wasn’t the first time they’d stood together at the top of the Commonwealth Games presentation podium. They were there on the Gold Coast in 2018.

It was not long after that Amanda laid her racquet to rest.

Environmentalist since Waikite childhood

On the work front this driven 31-year-old is an environmental forester employed by Timberlands. All going according to plan by the year’s end she’ll be a fully qualified environmental scientist. Her three and a half years of extramural studies have been via Massey University. She’s on the home straight with a swag of final assignments presently sidelining squash and socialising. 

She chose Massey because she wasn’t keen to study full time. “I wanted to work while studying to be able to support myself and maintain a bit of freedom.”  

For Amanda the environment isn’t simply a job, it’s her passion, nurtured by growing up in Waikite Valley. 

Although Rotorua born, her whakapapa is rooted in the Taranaki rohe.  

Her parents came this way as sharemilkers. Both have since remarried, hence her double-barrelled surname. 

Growing up in the valley she was a country kid by total immersion. Her school days began at the local primary with its archetypal rural school calf club and pet lamb days. 

“I loved growing up out there, it was so peaceful, beautiful. I’m a country girl at heart. I’d love to live in the country again. I’m working on my partner about that at the moment.”

Her partner is fishing guide Julian Danby. They met while working together at the local Hunting and Fishing store.  

Squash usurps hockey

Amanda was eight when she entered the sporting world. That was as a hockey player. She was a junior Bay rep until she was 13, playing at right half or inner. Hockey fell by the wayside when squash became all consuming in her early teens.

Her parents had always been keen social players. She’d hung around the courts with them and learnt to play at the Reporoa Club. You don’t get much more inherently down home country than that.

“I could hit a ball and had had a couple of lessons here and there when I was invited to trial for the national development squad. I was probably the second to worst there but I was probably one of the fittest. I began to think I like this [squash]. It was a game where it was up to me, not a team, whether I win or lose.”

She began to follow the North Island tournament circuit. “I certainly wasn’t great when I started.”

In the off season there was a lot of court work with her stepdad, Mike Murphy.

“We were there every day but I didn’t get invited back to the [development] squad the next year. That was good motivation for sure. It was like ‘I don’t need them to be able to do this.’ In my 14-year-old mind if you beat someone in the squad you think ‘okay I have proved something’.”

She was offered a trial the following year. “I turned it down because I realised I didn’t need to be in that squad.”

International representation

She came back “into the framework” at 16 and was playing the deciding match for selection into the World Junior Women’s team when she injured herself. It forced her to withdraw. 

“Luckily I was still young enough to get back into the team two years later. We went to Chennai” [India].

The team manager was Rotorua’s former international squash queen, Dame Susan Devoy.     

“To us young girls it was really inspiring to be around her, feed off her and tailor that to suit yourself.”   

With school behind her Amanda enrolled at Auckland’s Unitec to study architecture. She chose Auckland because the New Zealand Squash Centre was based there. However after six months squash won out and she dropped out of her degree course. 

“I said to my parents I didn’t want to do study, I wanted to do squash and they were very supportive of that.”

She returned to Rotorua, training at the Ti Street Squash Club, coupled with “a lot” of running in the forest and part-time office work.

“I liked that counterbalance to the physical training I was doing. Working meant I was around people which makes a difference to your mentality. When you are playing an individual sport it can be lonely.”

Amanda turned pro in 2011, receiving some funding from squash’s governing body. Her parents and her part time earnings topped it up.  

Her selection for the women’s world team the following year launched her jet-setting days. 

She has a giggle at the jet-setting word, assuring us hers wasn’t the glamorous   lifestyle it implies. 

“I’ve been very lucky to have been able to do what I do, travel the world and play the sport I love. However between hotels and sporting venues you don’t see a lot of the places you go to.  I now want to revisit them.”

Time out

By 2016 she found herself struggling with squash. “I felt I had not made enough progress. A lot of people had invested time and money in my squash over the years. I felt they hadn’t got value for it. I needed to get back that hunger [for the sport].”

She took time out from the international circuit to draw breath.

“I reassessed and decided if I was going to do it I was going to do it myself. I didn’t want to be a burden on my parents any more. I found a way to fund the travel myself which helped ease my feelings of guilt. It meant if I failed it wasn’t affecting anyone else. 

“I think taking time away gave me some perspective. I’d also been injured, had hurt my back.” 

That’s when she got her job at Hunting and Fishing and coupled up with Julian.

She returned to the courts in 2017, the year before she and King took their first Commonwealth Games gold.

“I’ve known Joelle since I started playing squash. She was always an amazing player, someone I definitely looked up to. We paired up.” They trained together in Cambridge, King’s home town.

“Joelle had won gold at Delhi in 2010 with Jackie Hawkes. She retired, leaving the doubles spot open. There were three of us going for it in 2014. It helped that I’m left handed. With that you get two forehands. Our combo just jelled.”

Commonwealth Games beckon

They played their first Commonwealth Games together in Glasgow in 2014 and the world doubles in 2017, 2018 and again this year.

When Amanda retired she was sure it would be for good. Her court partner had other ideas.

“Joelle rang me last year and convinced me to come out of retirement. I’d played a few tournaments throughout New Zealand but I’d been 18 months without a racquet in my hand. I guess I’d always felt I had unfinished business. My sole purpose in coming back was to defend our gold. There were a few difficulties to navigate.”

These included not stepping on a court together since the Gold Coast four years earlier. There were two reasons for this: Covid’s border closures and that King is now UK based. 

“We had one training session together then it was straight into this year’s world doubles. Thankfully we fell back into our old ways. We tracked well, made the semis without dropping a game, then Joelle got injured so we had to withdraw. I think it was a blessing in disguise because we’d done enough to qualify for the Comms. It also meant we went in there third or fourth seeds so didn’t have a target on our backs.”

By Amanda’s reckoning injuries are an accepted part of squash players’ lives.   

“Squash is one of the hardest sports in the world physically. There’s a saying in squash you have to be fit to play squash, you don’t play squash to be fit.

“It is brutal on the body. People end up with operations all over their bodies.”

Birmingham triumph

Harking back to the Birmingham triumph she shared with King Amanda has one word for it - “emotional”.

“I still don’t know if it has set in. It was pure relief, joy. You have come to do a job and achieved it. This year has been tough time-wise. The win validates the hard work I had been putting into it.

“It’s such a cool feeling to be part of the wider New Zealand team. Because ours was the last medal event of the games there was a big crowd of other Kiwi competitors and staff there supporting us; that was awesome.”

Her next goal?

“I think it will depend on where Joelle and I are in four years, whether we are both keen to play in doubles and go for our third gold. That would round it out nicely but it’s a long way away.

“For now I’m just taking squash one step at a time. I’m going to enjoy this year, what it’s brought and go from there.”