England no show was ‘a blip’, says Murray

Twelve days on from Twickenham, the bounce is back and so is the determination to sign off for Japan on a positive note this Saturday so Conor Murray can put Ireland’s England hammering down to a mere blip.

Murray was one of the Irish first-teamers whose first run of the summer ended in disaster two weeks ago as England racked up a record 57-15 score at Twickenham but the scrum-half believes the corner has been turned and Joe Schmidt’s narrowed-down World Cup squad is back on the front foot following an encouraging rebound win in Cardiff last weekend.

That theory gets put under the microscope in Dublin on Saturday as Ireland welcome the Welsh to the Aviva Stadium for the final game before heading to Tokyo a week today.

The opening Pool A game against Scotland follows on September 22 in Yokohama and Murray, 30, wants to head to his third World Cup with momentum gathering and the Twickenham no-show firmly in the rear-view mirror.

“The England game, I just really feel it was a blip,” Murray said yesterday.

“Something happened, or we were under-cooked or whatever, and that’s why last week was so big and hopefully we can go again this weekend and leave these shores with a good mindset.

“I can only say we’ve played another game, we’re not coming off a week of really tough training in Portugal and you would hope that the freshness is there. But you could see it, physically and mentally last week in Cardiff, there was more of a bounce, more of an intent, kind of more of a willingness to work for each other that wasn’t there in Twickenham, for whatever reason.

“England scored a couple of tries untouched from first phase and that just doesn’t and cannot happen in international rugby… that was the motivation for the whole squad.

"I know the lads who played (last Saturday), it was definitely there but even watching last weekend, you just wanted to show that energy, show that enthusiasm and that’s the challenge now, this weekend, to go again.

Hopefully we’ll look back after this World Cup and say that England game was just a blip. We’ve worked hard enough to get over that and move forward. Last weekend was a huge test, kind of backs against the wall stuff.

"I know the teams are going to be a little bit different, you’d imagine, this weekend. We know how good Wales are, the year they’ve had and where they’re set in the world and that’s a challenge in itself, giving them that respect and for us it’s going again, going up to that level again and building on that performance from last week.

“I’m really looking forward to the performance we put in and really excited about the performance we can put in because the eight weeks (of training) has felt really good and you’re kind of just itching and excited to get out there and put it into a display.

“More often than not, we get that right and the result takes care of itself. I’m sure you’ve seen it before with the players that we have, if we perform then we’re there or thereabouts.”