Munster’s Mr Versatile laments try that wasn’t
But Murphy still argues it was legitimate and that, had Wayne Barnes allowed it to stand, it might well have been a contender for the try of the season given the spectacular roles played by Paul Warwick and Doug Howlett in a sensational build up.
However, Murphy took the blow philosophically. “Disappointing, but at least we scored others and won the game. Hopefully, we’ll have a lot more to come in this competition.”
That incident apart, Murphy is a man at ease with himself as he relishes the prospect of a call up to Ireland ‘s autumn international squad tomorrow.
He certainly has shown his versatility since his move from Leicester, playing full back, wing and both 12 and 13 for parts of Saturday’s match.
Yet, he’s not taking anything for granted, preferring to focus his mind on helping Munster through a tough pre-Christmas Magners League and Heineken Cup programme. Anything else will be a huge bonus.
“I’m very happy here, my life out of rugby is going fantastically well and that contributes to playing well. The guys have made me feel so welcome, I love the ethos, the work ethic and everything else; the banter can be quite harsh at times and so you either sink or swim, but I’m going all right at the moment.”
Murphy admitted it had been a tough week building up to his first Heineken Cup experience at Thomond Park with Munster coming off the back of successive away defeats to Leinster and London Irish.
“We had got some stick and that gets to you even if we say it doesn’t; in a sense, it helps to bond guys and you want to go out and play for each other really. The way we were trying to play, we had been really close to putting sides to the sword; last week (against London Irish), we had some chances but didn’t finish them off, this time we took our opportunities.
“You would have to give full credit to the pack; there was a lot of talk about their front five but our guys gave us a huge platform and that was crucial.”
The remarkable improvement in set piece play – the scrums for well over a month and the line out in the space of a week – was not an accident, insisted skipper Denis Leamy who revealed that much of Munster ‘s concentration all week had been in these particular areas.
The return of Mick O’Driscoll coincided with a hugely prosperous afternoon in terms of clean, quality possession. “Mick came in and steadied the line out; he did a great week’s work, gave us different options to work on and took the pressure off (Damien Varley) Varls. He deserved his Man-of- the-Match award. I think our scrum has worked because of what we put into it on the training pitch; it’s a very valuable source of possession and the front five, particularly, deserve huge credit.”
Leamy could scarcely believe that Munster coughed up a try inside the opening minutes and said the only good thing about it was that there were still 79 minutes to go!
“Hardly the ideal start,” he mused. “I didn’t see whether it was a forward pass – that makes four of us who didn’t (referee and two touch judges) – and you don’t want to allow a team like Toulon score that early in the game. But we just had to reset our goals, it was early in the game and we put it to one side; the positive thing was that we went down there, got penalty after penalty and eventually got the score. From there on, our intensity and work rate, just about everything really, was very positive. We got the scores off the back of positivity.”
That, he said, was in contrast to the round one defeat to London Irish. “We put too much pressure on ourselves in that; we probably gifted them 20 points which is not what you want to do; we gave them five kickable penalties and that intercept try.
“We just didn’t play as smart as we needed to. This time we were much smarter, our scrum was good and our lineout was good. Right across the board we had big performances from key men.”
But Leamy warns against writing Toulon out of the Pool 3 equation. “Whatever the result, they are a good side and we haven’t seen the end of them. This game was still there to be won with about 15 minutes to go; you could see from the type of rugby they tried to play – and the ball didn’t always go to hand for them – they are a very talented side.”
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