Race-riding temporarily freed his mind of the madness which surrounded him during that time but three months out of the game from December to March saw his livelihood taken away and he struggled to cope with the gaping hole left behind.

Mental health problems bubbled to the surface as he wrestled with getting out of bed in the early stages, while his weight “ballooned” to 10-and-a-half stone as he packed on the pounds with no focus to keep him busy during those challenging times.

“It was an opportunity to think about what it’s like not to have anything to do when you get up in the morning and not really have a focus. I found that very strange and it was hard to get up and do things,” Murphy tells the Irish Independent.

“I realised pretty quickly that there was no point feeling sorry for myself, I needed to go and experience different things. I forced myself out of bed in the morning and to begin the day by making my bed and saying my prayers. I started ticking things off the list.

“When you’re lying in bed at midday on a Monday and you’re thinking, ‘Oh, is there anything I need to do today?’ Or, ‘How am I going to spend my day?’ It’s very easy to stay in bed for the whole day whereas I found by ticking off certain things, it was a beginning anyway.

“It’s very hard even when people are saying and you know you shouldn’t really feel that down, it’s hard to lift yourself up because the further you climb, the further you fall and that’s often the case. Maybe it’s only when it happens that there’s an appreciation.”

Slowly but surely, the wheel started to turn as his Lambourn neighbour Jamie Osborne allowed him to take out a handful of horses “whenever I felt like it” as they jumped “random things and random hedges” and his equine love was slowly rekindled.

Doubts about whether he would continue as a jockey arose despite the staggering success he had achieved up until that point, but his appreciation for the special position he holds as one of the world’s best riders wasn’t long returning as he realised once again, “I get paid to ride horses every day”.

Twelve counselling sessions were completed via Zoom through the PJA (Professional Jockeys Association) while it wasn’t long before he started riding out again and returned to the gallops of Andrew Balding, Michael Stoute, Saeed bin Suroor and many more of his “usuals” with a strict conditioning plan seeing any excess weight quickly shed before his return in mid-March.

“The flame was very much burning inside” the 25-year-old when he returned for Dubai World Cup Night in Meydan – his mount Loves Only You was just touched off by the David Egan-ridden Mishriff in the lucrative Sheema Classic – and it hasn’t quenched in his pursuit of winners as he already heads the jockeys’ championship standings in the early stages.

Murphy has a point to prove – as emphasised when he lifted Confrontational from last to first at Newcastle on Tuesday – but he also has perspective. Something far more serious than racing helped to bring his feet firmly back onto the ground.

“I’ll tell you what the turning point was. There’s a little boy whose uncle is a family friend and he’s obviously a racing fan and I sent him some stuff last year like my goggles and an old stick (whip) and I found out that he had leukaemia,” Murphy says.

“He was suffering from leukaemia and it really put things into perspective. Suddenly, it dawned on me that there’s a far bigger, greater world than the little racing bubble that I can find myself in on a daily basis.”

Murphy tries not to place the same “unhealthy” stress on his shoulders any more but he’s quick to note that perspective has not replaced hunger and his thirst for success has not dimmed, not even one iota.

“I’m definitely less stressed about always trying to prove a point. From the time I started riding I wanted to be champion apprentice and then winning Group Ones and be champion jockey and now I feel like . . . of course I want to be champion jockey 20 times over like AP McCoy.

“But I speak to my dad every day on the phone and, as he says, you’ve got to enjoy what you’re doing and the pressure I’ve put myself under over the last five years wasn’t healthy.

“It just wasn’t good, so now I like to go racing knowing that I’m going to give them as good a ride as I can and hope that I ride more winners than anyone else. Losers would have really, really angered and frustrated me but now it does annoy me, but for five minutes not five days.

“I don’t want people to misplace my frame of mind with a lack of hunger, the hunger is still there but I’m a little bit older and wiser. In the last few weeks I’m down at 15 per cent strike-rate, that’s fine for most people, but I want to be at 20-plus per cent.”

The Killarney rider, who has been based in the UK since his late teens, missed home more than ever during his time out but his mother Maria has been living with him for the past few months and her brother Jim Culloty, the three-time Gold Cup-winning rider, has regularly been a huge source of support and advice.

Murphy, who grew up alongside Kerry football superstar David Clifford in Two Mile CNS with the pair sharing the same childminder in their youth, has always been one to front up in good and bad times but he often finds himself as the butt of many jokes on social media.

He describes the “constant” daily online abuse and cannot get his head around the free rein which platforms offer those with an axe to grind minus any repercussions.

“People will tag me on things and be unhappy with the way that I’ve ridden a horse and there’s obviously a lot of drug innuendo floating around. Ninety-nine per cent of the time it doesn’t bother me that much,” the Classic-winning jockey outlines.

“I find a lot of people turn the abuse into a respect when I have replied to their comments and I make an effort when things go wrong in races to explain on my Twitter and Instagram.

“I did it for the Derby last year and I want people to understand why I made that split-second decision.

“With the drug innuendo, people think it’s funny or whatever. Often I can ignore it but it is what it is.

“I find it difficult to understand why you can create a fake account and not attach your own name to it. They are very, very common and they have large followings and I suppose when you’re not on the receiving end it can be quite entertaining.

“But we’re all guilty of expressing our views. Sometimes we’re unhappy with a football player or a golfer and we don’t even give thought to maybe if this person sees this, how do you make them feel?

“Maybe we expect that if this person has a high profile or might have a celebrity status in certain ways that they should be able to deal with it and maybe deserve the social media abuse that they receive.

“But if that was another person in a normal walk of life we would say that they’ve been bullied or harassed. If you say something untoward to someone in the workplace in this day and age, there’s some sort of repercussions and by law it has to be investigated

“And yet you can go online and abuse someone and tell them you hope they die and that’s perfectly fine. It’s quite amazing how society views certain things.”

Murphy, who is retained rider for the powerful Qatar Racing, hopes to add to his Group One haul at Royal Ascot next month before a triumphant return home in the autumn for Irish Champions Weekend.

Being champion jockey is something he wants to do “multiple times”, with another six rides at Haydock today in an effort to get more winners on the board. Murphy took a sharp fall but he intends on scaling new heights with his new-found wisdom propelling him forward.

“When you’re doing well you feel on top of the world and you’ll have lots of people that will lift you up but when things have gone wrong, lots of people want to perch their feet on your shoulders and help you fall down,” he says.

“It’s important to find a happy medium and try not to get too high when things are going well and too low when things are going bad.

“It doesn’t matter what sport or industry you’re in, it’s never constant and there’s always a roller-coaster effect.”

No doubt there are plenty more twists and turns ahead.