About Sensei Alan Murdoch
Sensei Alan Murdoch, a 5th Dan, started training in January 1969 at the Kobe Osaka Karate club in Glasgow, Scotland under Sensei Thomas M Morris.
Sensei Alan was born in Stirlingshire and was brought up in Glasgow where he first started learning karate.
For fear of being beaten up while walking home from night school, Sensei Alan, aged 23 at the time, started to take up karate lessons and learned how to defend himself.
In October 1969 Sensei received his green belt and then again in March 1970 he was graded to blue belt.
He didn't grade again until 18 months later and went straight to 1st kyu and 9 months later was given Shodan black belt, 1st dan, by Sensei Shigeru Kimura, who was the founder of what we classed as Shukokai, 1 month before leaving for Australia in October 1972.
My first exposure to Aussie karate was at a local shopping centre where there was a demonstration of some Wado-Ryu students. After some prompting by my wife, I went up and spoke to him that was John Gittus current Victorian AKF President. I entered my first local competition 3 months after arriving in Australia which was Bob Jones of Zendo-Kai's first Open event in Springvale town Hall. I fought against Malcolm Anderson who defeated me 3-2.
One year later I competed in Bob Jones 2nd Open in Melbourne where I met and struck up a very competitive relationship with Bruce Hyland, now head Instructor of Ishinryu. Bruce was a big part of my life as I trained and fought with him for the next eight years. Bruce and I trained once a week, sometimes twice in those eight years. He gave me the incentive to improve my kicking range and ability to try and be as good as he was with his kicks.
Sensei Alan's first major tournament was the Victorian State Championships in 1980 where he achieved 1st place in a division that had 10 or more men including him. That year he also made the State Team and went on to the Nationals in Sydney where Victoria won the male team kumite.
In 1983, Sensei Alan gave up competing to concentrate on coaching the State Team and was a Victorian Coach for 17 years. That year he made the State Team for the last time, and captained the B team of male kumite for the Nationals. The B Team ended up beating the NSW A Team quite convincingly.
Unfortunately there were no girls competing in karate at that time, so it was just the men.
To get more into the Sports side, Sensei Alan joined up with the Karate Instructors Association (KIA), where he met some of todays AKF members such as Edji Zenel and David Zarb.
In 1974 I had been training on my own for 2 years and wanted to affiliate with Shukokai who were established in Queensland under Tamio Tsuji. My first impression of him was that he was a very good Karate Ka, but I didn't take to him too personally, so I didn't affiliate with him.
I was lucky enough some months before, to meet with Stan Prokuda, who was training with Katsumi Iba under the Rembukan banner. Sensei Iba at one stage was Sensei Kimura's Sempai; they were so alike in so many ways it was uncanny. In the early 70's Shukokai in Queensland was very powerful under Laurie Vaneekirk who had trained in South Africa and brought Sensei Tani to Australia to expand the organization. Unfortunately Sensei Tani appointed Sensei Tsuji as head of style; and this broke up Shukokai in Queensland. I was unsure about joining them due to the distance involved in travel. However one of the Instructors didn't want me to join and was creating some problems, so I decided against taking it further.
Some 5 years later Sensei Alan received a call from John Gittus who was a member of the then FAKO now AKF Victoria, and said he should apply, as Sensei Tsuji had pulled out of the Federation.
So in 1979 I joined the Australian Karate Federation, and I'm glad I did as I have met so many genuine Karate-Ka from it. In 1980 I won the Victorian State Championships, with Danny Dechalain and Sonia Leonardi who both won their divisions. From that year on we never had less than 3 Gold medals at the State Championships.
In 1983, Sensei Alan achieved State Referee and then National Referee. 1986 was the year that Sensei also received Asian Pacific Union (APUKO) as a Kumite Referee and as a Kata Judge.
1989 was the year that Sensei Alan was made a National Australian Coach, with Morgan Abouzeid as his assistant where Australia achieved a Gold, Silver and Bronze success at the 1989 APUKO championships where we won the final in the Teams event against the previously unbeaten Japan. In 1990 and 1991, we had success with Gold and Bronze at the Women's Fukuoka Cups. Also in 1990, we had a 3rd place medal at the World Championships with Bernadette Brogan and with the team gaining their best results in International Competition for years.
Even though neither Morgan or myself never attended the 1992 Fukuoka event or the World Championships in Egypt, the teams that we had worked on and developed 2 months prior also had major success, the highlight being at the World Championships where Charlene Machin and Brian Peakhall, students of NSW Richard Bradford, both won Gold medals.
As for the development of Shukokai here in Australia; Sensei Alan founded Australian Shukokai Karate in 1973. He opened his first dojo in 1974 which was in the centre of Dandenong. At one time Sensei Alan had 4 dojos all over Victoria. In 1980 he arranged for Sensei Tommy to come to Melbourne in Sept 1981. Prior to his visit Sensei also met a student of South African Shukokai named Paul Mitchell.
Paul was a student of Sensei Chris Thompson and had emigrated to Australia; our meeting started the Australian Shukokai Karate Association (ASKA) and later we were joined by another instructor doing Shukokai called Ian Eddy. (Ian was a student of Kurt Klimkait who later joined Paul)
In 1982 Sensei Alan brought Sensei Chris Thompson to Melbourne and in 1983 they both went to Portugal for the Shukokai World Championships there, and affiliated fully with Sensei Kimura whilst there.
We were both graded to 4th Dan by Sensei Kimura and spent many enjoyable times, training with him here and in America for many years. Due to personal reasons I left the association in 1989 and rejoined with Sensei Tommy's group Kobe Osaka International where I received my 5th Dan from him.
Awarded the 7th dan in 16th April 2006
Born: 29/08/1946
Past on 18/11/06