Murray making his voice heard in heat of battle

Conor Murray has made quite an impression in his short international career to date, but, as he prepares for his RBS 6 Nations home debut, the Ireland scrum-half believes he is now being heard as well as seen.

As any coach will tell you, a successful team is dependent on good lines of communication. Rugby is no exception and it is something Murray has been acutely aware of since he settled on scrum-half as his chosen position at St Munchin’s College in Limerick as a 16-year-old.

Six years on, barely six months into his Test career, the kid from Patrickswell who will start for his country against Italy at the Aviva Stadium, is satisfied he has found his voice both on and off the field.

“That’s the point that I’ve always during my progression through the academy had to work on,” Murray said. “I feel quite comfortable talking in a group now, expressing opinions and ideas that we might bring through on to the pitch.

“And once we get on the pitch I don’t think there’s an issue at all. I don’t feel quiet or anything like that on the pitch.

“I’m sure the lads will hear me when I’m behind them. They might not pay any attention to me but they do hear me, so I suppose that’s a good thing.”

Having broken into the Munster starting XV whilst still an academy player last April, and then into the national set-up last summer, the prospect of barking orders at senior players might have made a young rookie a nervous wreck.

“Yeah, but from talking to them and training with them, you understand that they need you to talk. You need to be their eyes in certain areas when you’re attacking and guide them around the place.

“They’re working so hard they just need to hear voices and react to that. I suppose coming into scrum-half when I was 16 or 17, just moving there, I didn’t really understand how to play there properly so I suppose that just came as I progressed.”

Murray acknowledged playing alongside a fly-half as experienced as Ronan O’Gara has been a huge benefit to his rapid development in the pro ranks. Yet his working relationship with today’s starting out-half, Jonathan Sexton, is still very much in its infancy. The Munster nine and Leinster 10 have only been on a pitch together four times in Test matches with their minutes together, 153, amounting to just less than two matches, and 77 of them coming in the Six Nations loss at home to Wales.

“I feel quite good with Jonny at the moment. I’ve a fair idea of how he wants to play. We have a system in Ireland, it doesn’t really matter what out-half slots in there. They’re obviously different players but with the system we play, they play quite similarly so I don’t think there’s an issue with that.

“I’m getting to know him a lot better lately and understanding what he wants from me as well and where he wants me to play. So I feel good with him at the moment and I’m looking forward to getting another run with him this weekend.”

And so the education continues. Murray had been talking before news of Tony McGahan’s departure from Munster at the end of this season had broken, but the scrum-half will soon have another new coach to learn from. The Australian’s departure back Down Under will mean saying farewell to the man who gave him a chance in a red jersey. And the scrum-half is still surprised at how quickly everyone has progressed in the last 12 months.

“If you’d have said to me before I got my first few games at Munster to get things rolling I mightn’t have believed it. For myself, when I first started playing with Munster, we played against Leinster in the Magners League, not the final but the [regular season] one in Thomond Park [in April] we just managed to scrape a win there and I thought it went quite well that night.

“It was a big game, against the best team in Europe and playing in a high-pressure environment at Thomond Park and I felt I came through that quite well and as I kept playing more games you begin to think are you able for it or not and I thought I was able for it and felt confident out there so I didn’t see a reason why I couldn’t kick on from there.

“I was lucky, well, not lucky, but delighted to get the call and get the chance to come up here and start training with [Ireland] in the summer and once I got into camp I just believed I was good enough.

“Tony always backs me and he tells me what I’m good at and what you’re not so good at and what you need to work on and I’ve backed myself I suppose.”