Conor Murray: We must stifle French flair to get win in Paris

Conor Murray at Ireland training at the IRFU High Performance Centre earlier this week. Picture: INPHO/Billy Stickland

Conor Murray and France go back a long way. They were the team he faced when he got his first taste of Test rugby in 2011, for a World Cup warm-up in Bordeaux, the side against whom he clinched his first Six Nations winners medal in 2014 and the challenge Ireland’s scrum-half must face once more if he wants to add to his trophy haul tomorrow night.

Murray, 31, will play against France for the 11th time when he makes his 83rd appearance for Ireland and though the fortunes of Les Bleus have fluctuated wildly during his Test career, the Munster star has experienced one constant from them throughout his near-decade in the international game.

“It's the French flair, I think, is always a threat, always a danger with them,” Murray said this week.

“We've had success against them in recent times, but over the past year or so they've been growing, getting much stronger as a unit. They're a lot harder to break down. But I think the constant is that flair.

“If they get in behind you, get that offloading game going then they can be really dangerous and you can end up chasing shadows.

“It's trying to contain that and then play your game on the back of it. But that is always the thing with the French. if they get in behind you and start free-flowing it's really dangerous. They've got players littered all over their team that can do that.

We're under no illusions how hard it's going to be, but I thought we went well at the weekend and we're confident in our own ability too.

“It's where you want to be, there's a trophy on the line. Whatever needs to be done come kick-off on Saturday night, we'll know by then. It's an exciting week, one you want to be part of.”

As Murray alluded to, the French have added some rearguard resilience to their game since the appointment of Shaun Edwards as defence coach by incoming head coach Fabien Galthié but the scrum-half also sees more cohesion in the way they apply that aforementioned flair in attack.

“Individually, they're really strong. The likes of (Virimi) Vakatawa and (Gael) Fickou who we know pretty well, half-backs (Antoine Dupont) and (Romain) Ntamack, they're all dangerous individual players.

“France in the past may have had that but I think they're learning to play as a unit, learning how to run off each other. I think that's been a real improvement of theirs this season. they're not just individuals going out to do something themselves.

“They have that danger, but they're linking up well. Their forward pack are really strong, give them front-foot ball and even their forwards are able to play that French flair game with their offloading. If they get in behind you, suddenly they rip on to their backline and you're on the back foot.

"As a whole, I think they know how to play together. Now they have the individuals and a team strength.”

Murray acknowledges going up against France in Paris in search of a bonus-point victory represents a huge step-up in challenge to the one posed last Saturday in Dublin against Italy, whom Ireland thrashed 50-17.

Even the weather looks likely to make things more difficult.

“Exactly, at the weekend the weather was great, we had a dry ball. It was free-flowing for the majority of it. Looking at the game at the weekend (coming), it could be wet, it could be windy. You just don't know.

“Whatever presents itself, you'd hope we can adapt on the day and play the effective game we want to play. That could be a number of ways… is there one type of gameplan we're going over with? The answer is no. We've to wait and see what they're trying to do in the first 10 minutes, what kind of linespeed et cetera.

“There's a lot of unknown, but we're trying to prepare as best we can for certain scenarios that might pop up. At the end of the day, that's what professional rugby is about; adapting to the pictures in front of you.”

If that means the deployment of the oft-maligned Murray box kick, then so be it as far as its exponent is concerned, though he takes exception to it being a label pinned on him alone.

“Firstly, the box kick is a team thing. It's not just the nine deciding he's going to kick it in the air and hope for the best. It's generally a team philosophy. We had time to look back on a few previous games and maybe we over-relied on it a bit.

“And if you're doing it all the time and then don't get possession back it doesn't look great.

We're not obsessed with that, we're looking to expand our game, grow it and part of that was sharing the kicking load at the weekend.

“I thought we did that really well. I thought we kicked on the front foot rather than potentially slowing things down and going to the previous routine of a box kick and setting up a ruck.

“This weekend was good, not just when we were exiting, in terms of our general speed of ball from rucks, it was great. We were playing off quick ball when we were attacking and when we were exiting. So it just made getting out of our half a lot easier.”