Conor Murray: ‘I felt better at the weekend... I felt energetic’

Class is permanent, and the hope is that Conor Murray’s dip in form is now behind him.

It has been a frustrating season for the Munster and Ireland scrum-half, whose first outing was delayed until November due to a neck injury suffered last summer. And while he has registered 14 appearances since, normal service has yet to fully resume.

He said:

It was good the weekend (against Edinburgh). Obviously, it was progression. The Six Nations was frustrating. There were small margins, that is what this game is built on.

"I asked myself: ‘Why is so much being made about this, why is there such a thing about my form and stuff?’

“They were tiny things, but tiny things are big things in the big picture, if that makes sense. A small, loose pass can kill a whole move, could kill a flow of an attack, so I felt better again at the weekend (against Edinburgh). I felt energetic.”

Murray’s injury was the source of considerable speculation during his absence and, while the player belatedly explained the nature of the issue well after the season started, he is adamant that the matter is fully resolved and that it has had no bearing on his form.

“Injury-wise, I feel great. I heard people say: ‘Was your neck OK?’. Unfortunately, my neck had nothing to do with it,” he joked. “I’d like to be able to blame it. The body feels great. Hopefully things will be on an upward curve.”

The Limerick man was not alone in struggling for his best game during the recent Six Nations campaign which began and ended for Joe Schmidt’s Ireland with demoralising defeats to England and Wales respectively.

The net result was a disappointing third-place finish and plenty of hand-wringing over a side that had entered the championship as favourites. But Murray has learned how to move on from bad days at the office such as the one in Cardiff last month.

“It was just a game of pressure. Wales went up after a minute and 20 seconds. They went 10-0 up and I was talking to one of the Welsh lads afterwards and he was saying: ‘We didn’t have to play much rugby after that, it was just let you try and play and chase the game.’ ”

“It was just a bad day, a really bad day. I got a break just after it. I parked it. I am used to it at this stage — not those bad days but, whether it is a win or loss, just parking it, moving on to the next thing, getting excited about the week ahead.”