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The Hungry Hooker -From the rugby pitch to the kitchen.   Donaghcloney man Jonny Murphy is going down a sweet treat on social media, amassing an amazing 500,000 followers showcasing his culinary delights.    We’ve been finding out all about his latest business venture.    Watch below to find out more.   Pick up your copy of The Chronicle tomorrow for the full story.

Transcript

00:00 Hi I'm Johnny Murphy, a previous professional rugby player from Banbridge. So I would have

00:05 played all my rugby there and then was with Ulster in England with Rotherham,

00:10 then down in Connacht in Galway. But a lot of people now would know me as The Hungry Hooker.

00:15 I'm really enjoying just the new journey and where it's sort of taken me.

00:19 You seem to have just shot to fame overnight as The Hungry Hooker on your Instagram.

00:24 Just tell me a little bit about your journey and where it all began.

00:27 Initially, when I was younger, I would have been up at my granny's,

00:30 when me and my little sister, when we were off from school.

00:33 So she looked after us and I would have been pottering around, helping in the kitchen or

00:37 helping my granda. And that sort of developed like a love for baking or just an enjoyment for it.

00:42 And then just through the years was doing a bit. And then when I was in Galway,

00:46 playing for Connacht, we had a coffee morning for the Galway Hospice. I brought some stuff in

00:54 and lads loved it. And they're sort of like, oh, who made this? And I was like, oh,

00:58 that was me. Lockdown hit, made a little Instagram page, dropped some stuff into a local cafe on the

01:05 off chance I had a bit of time just to see where it went and got a lot of help from that guy.

01:10 Unfortunately, years later, I had to retire from rugby due to concussion. And just,

01:15 it was sort of like it happened so quickly. Just a lot of people that were close to me and

01:20 teammates, family, friends just sort of give me the encouragement to give it a go. Initially,

01:27 I was like, OK, I'll do little videos like a recipe video or whatever to try and just get a

01:32 bit of traction for the page for to essentially sell more buns. And then the next minute sort of

01:38 just kept snowballing. And like Facebook, it had like shot up. It's like over 200,000 and

01:44 Tick Tock, all those and it's sort of now evolving and growing legs and turned into something else.

01:50 You mentioned there, Johnny, about how rugby was maybe your first love and something that

01:55 you saw yourself doing for years to come before you were told you couldn't play anymore. But

02:00 take me back to your whole journey with baking. Is it something that was always a real family

02:06 thing for you? From like a young age, like there's photos of me like, you know,

02:10 licking spoons and eating sort of farls and like just just like that thing. I think it's very like

02:16 wholesome sort of like homely thing cooking and especially baking like, you know, with

02:21 your parents or your grandparents. So like I was always doing that, but never once did I think

02:27 that that would like sort of turn into a career. It was more like an outlet. I'm enjoying it now.

02:34 It's definitely something I never thought would happen. I don't know where it's going to go or

02:37 where it would take me, but I'm sort of just like running with it. And I think that's maybe what

02:42 makes it relatable and people sort of connect to it, that it's actually like me being me.

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