Murphy tunes up for Lions swan song

IT’S a long haul this Lions tour to New Zealand and when you’ve flown so far from the nest for no apparent reason, it can even affect your mental stability.

Geordan Murphy must certainly have felt he was going round the bend as he toiled through the rugby outposts of New Plymouth, Invercargill and Palmerston North playing his own impressive brand of rugby at full-back yet experiencing the cold shoulder from the Test selectors.

As the Saturday team has stumbled from Christchurch to Wellington and now to Auckland, the Leicester and Ireland back has been ploughing his own furrow in midweek.