Kieran Marmion aware of need to bide his time to get number nine jersey

Kieran Marmion is not about to argue he is a viable alternative to Conor Murray for the Ireland number nine jersey. Not yet at least.

Like most of the rugby world, the Connacht player views the incumbent scrum-half as “probably the best in the world” in that position and accepts the battle he needs to be contesting is to hold off Leinster’s Luke McGrath for a place on the replacements bench, continuing this Saturday against France. That does not mean, however, that Marmion lacks the ambition to make the Ireland scrum-half berth his own.

“Obviously I want to challenge him but at the moment I think he’s probably the best in the world,” Marmion, 25, said yesterday. “Everything... his basics, he’s so good at, and that’s something I want to improve on to get closer to him. He’s going really well at the moment so I have to keep trying as hard as I can to improve as much as I can to get as close to him as I can.