Murray: It’s just a stadium

It’s five years and a handful of weeks since former Leicester Tigers coach Pat Howard sat on a battered old sofa in the club’s training grounds and described Thomond Park as “just a field” to a scrum of English and Irish journalists.

It wasn’t meant as an incendiary device.

There was none of the trademark cockiness with which we have come to expect from Howard’s fellow Australians. It was merely a statement of fact ahead of what proved to be their historic visit to Limerick later in the week.

Howard’s refusal to buy into Thomond’s aura was aped unconsciously two days ago when Conor Murray drew up a chair in Carton House and fielded the predictable barrage of queries about another stadium that has so often been worth a try or two to the home side. Particularly against Ireland.

The closest Murray has come to the Stade de France before now has been to pass it by on the motorway to and from the airport and the icy snap in Europe which cancelled yesterday’s captain’s run means he won’t even have the chance to familiarise himself with the pitch until a few hours before kick-off.

Not an issue, he insists. In fact, he answers each and every enquiry about the Parisian bear pit with the same sense of assuredness that has secured his meteoric rise from Munster reserve to his country’s first-choice nine in the blink of an eye although one sentence stands out from the crowd.

“It’s just a stadium, you know.”

Like Howard’s, it wasn’t a reply intended to get up opposition noses but you get the feeling nonetheless that the kid will be alright tonight whatever the result. If anything, his lack of previous experience in Saint-Denis means he can at least take to the stage unencumbered by the baggage of Ireland’s previous defeats.

And what defeats. Ireland step out onto the wintry tundra tonight on the back of a record that has seen them concede 24 tries in their last six visits to the city (five Six Nations and one Rugby World Cup) since Brian O’Driscoll claimed that hat-trick in 2000.

Vincent Clerc scored six of them.

Only Ronan O’Gara remains in the current squad from the side that claimed that out-of-the-blue success 12 years ago when a 10-year-old Murray was still dreaming of hurling glory with Patrickswell and Limerick.

Even two years ago, when Ireland and France last met in Paris, Murray was scrum-half on a Munster ‘A’ team that faced Nottingham in a British & Irish Cup tie at the Waterford Regional Sports Grounds the evening before.

Little did he know then that his own senior Irish debut would arrive in France within 18 months when he replaced Eoin Reddan with 20 minutes still to go in the World Cup warm-up Test at Bordeaux’s Stade Chaban-Delmas.

His opposite number when he clocked in that night was Dimitri Yachvili but Morgan Parra came on to close out the 19-12 win and it will be the Clermont Auvergne half-back who wears nine for Les Bleus this week after Yachvili dropped out with back problems. Murray and Kidney have both played down the significance of that late change though one is noted more for his box-kicking and the other for his turn of speed, but both are cast in the same ‘petit general’ mould which the French seem to demand of all their nines.

“I suppose different countries look at it differently but I feel when you play nine you have quite an important role in the team anyway,” said the Munster back. “They might just phrase it differently in France. They run things a bit more in tens.”

Parra is less than six months older than his opposite number and yet boasts almost 30 more caps but Murray has been no timid greenhorn since his elevation last August and has no hesitation in bossing his pack about when the situation demands it of him.

Inexperience? An unaffordable luxury in Paris.

“There’s no time for that on the pitch. Hopefully, with the games I’ve played in, I’m getting nearer to getting rid of that tag. I’ve played in a good few big games lately so I’m looking forward to not having that inexperienced tag.”