Upbeat Conor Murray hopes Joe Schmidt won’t leave

Conor Murray hopes Joe Schmidt will take stock of Ireland’s potential and elect to stay and guide the national team to better things after an encouraging summer tour to South Africa.

The Irish scrum-half is just back in training with Munster after a long year that culminated in a memorable but ultimately disappointing 2-1 series defeat to South Africa.

The haunting negative of that series outcome was tempered by Ireland’s first test win on South African soil, after the men in green had come agonisingly close on a previous 1980 visit.