Revitalised Murphy eager to wallop Wallabies

ONLY one team scored a try against the All Blacks on their Grand Slam tour of the Northern Hemisphere in 2008 – and it wasn’t Scotland, Ireland, England or Wales.

The honour went to Munster, who frightened the lives out of the New Zealanders on a memorable night at Thomond Park before they scraped a win through a late, late Joe Rokocoko try. The man to breach the tourists’ line was Barry Murphy. It’s an achievement he’ll dine on for the rest of his days.

“I hear the question often comes up at table quizzes,” he mused. “I didn’t have to do a huge amount, the scrum did the work and Strings (Peter Stringer) spotted the gap and all I had to do was touch it down but it’s a nice one to have.

“It was an incredible night and I’ll never forget it. It was unbelievable: the build-up, the history, the crowd, the atmosphere... we have a lot of connections with New Zealand and even travelled there as a family. Every Kiwi who came to Limerick for the first 15 years in my life seemed to stop off at our house few a couple of weeks.”

Sadly Murphy’s appearances have since been seriously curtailed due by a series of ankle, back and hamstring injuries. He wasn’t helped by an apparent misdiagnosis and rushing back prematurely once or twice and his last game for Munster was against the Dragons 14 months ago.

However, since his return less than a month ago, Murphy has scored outstanding tries in two of his three outings with UL Bohemian and is now hopeful that his injury problems are a thing of the past and that Tuesday’s clash of Munster and Australiain the Sony Ericsson Challenge at Thomond will herald greater things.

“I never for a minute thought my career was over,” he maintains. “It was very frustrating but I knew it was going to come right. I came back in April for a game with Bohs and lasted four minutes. I went over on my ankle again. That was a pretty low point but there are a lot of inspiring people around who have also gone through tough times, you see what Jerry Flannery and Paul O’Connell have to go through.

“I’ve been working with those guys every day, having lunch and chatting, keeping each other in high spirits. When you’ve got people like that around it makes it a lot easier. I firmly believe that these experiences stand to you and while I might have missed a lot of rugby, I still learned a lot in the year.

“Tuesday is my first chance to prove to the management that I am still a force to be reckoned with. I just need game time.”

Munster coach Tony McGahan believes having Murphy available again means a lot to the squad.

“Barry has been an integral part of Munster rugby for a long period,” said McGahan. “He has struggled for continuity of games and training time and that’s tough.

“So full credit to Barry and his determination to play for Munster.”