Conor Murray’s commitment to cause earns him another chance

OLD RELIABLE: Conor Murray prepares to feed Keith Earls during the Ireland Captain’s Run at Aviva Stadium. The Munster man brings experience and assurance to the number nine slot. Pic: INPHO/Dan Sheridan

Sport’s habit of overegging its own importance can be pre-baked on weekends like this. Talk of life and death barges carelessly into the discourse. Battle analogies proliferate on a field where they should have no place.

SIX NATIONS RUGBY CHAMPIONSHIP 2025

Your home for the latest news, views and analysis of this year's Six Nations Championship from our award winning sports team.

SIX NATIONS RUGBY CHAMPIONSHIP 2025

Your home for the latest news, views and analysis of this year's Six Nations Championship from our award winning sports team.

None of those absurdities should apply on Lansdowne Road on Saturday. Not on the back of a week where Conor Murray’s father, Gerry, suffered serious injuries in a road accident and required treatment at Cork University Hospital.

Rugby and the frivolity that is a Six Nations title chase can’t help but know its place when framed in that context, but Murray’s availability on Saturday demonstrates the player’s commitment to the cause while highlighting yet again sport’s ability to act as a form of salve at times of wider distress.

There are no shortage of Irish nines, or opinions on where they rank, but Murray’s presence in the lineup against France is as reassuring on a technical level as it is pleasing on a human one given Craig Casey and Caolin Blade, both fine players, have just nine caps between them and one start.

Murray is 33 now. He is a dozen years into an Ireland career that began with a World Cup warm-up against Saturday’s opponents and that ability to spend so long at the summit of this most brutal of games was highlighted by Andy Farrell last November before the nine’s 100th cap, against South Africa.

The Ireland head coach held forth at the time on the inherent difficulty in staying at the pinnacle of your sport for such a stretch, and of the tendency we have as a society these days to always crane our necks towards the next big thing. Let him without sin cast the first stone there...

Murray’s absence from the Munster matchday squad that faced Northampton Saints last month fed into the perception of a superb player slipping down the back end of a stellar career. One who had become pigeon-holed as a box-kicker and as a man unable to play at the pace required by this Irish side.

He had heard those accusations. How could he not?

“Yeah, I'd be lying if I didn't say it but it has annoyed me in the past,” he admitted four days ago. “I look at the game and the way we play it and the way I play it. Like, it's just a gameplan thing, we don't actually kick that much at times anymore at, certainly, Munster.

“It's a strength when we do go to it and it's a good territory tactic and the boys chasing it are brilliant. So no, it doesn't (bother him), it's part of the game. Whatever chat goes on outside of my group, it really doesn't affect me. I'm probably too old to allow that kind of stuff to affect me. So, no, all good.” 

One of Farrell’s points of difference is his willingness to opt for selection calls that don’t always chime with the latest provincial trends. The decision to hand Jamison Gibson-Park the No.9 jersey in 2021 is the best example of that, but Murray has since been the first reserve at Test level regardless of his club status.

He played well enough from the off against the Springboks three months ago but the attritional nature of that game, Ireland’s issues at the breakdown and his own forced departure with a groin issue after 33 minutes prevented him from showing anything that would convert those disbelievers.

All of which meant that his start in Cardiff against Wales last Saturday was big. Bigger in a very real way than that game against the world champions when he had worn a single digit on his green jersey for the first time in a year. So big, in fact, that the nerves dwarfed those he had felt on his debut in 2011. “By a mile,” he admitted.

Farrell has been praised, rightly, for his evolution of the Ireland team via a catalogue of fresh faces, but his ability to keep mining gold from players who have had to revert from first-choice to back-up has been just as remarkable.

Murray aside, the head coach continues to draw from the well that is 35-year old Cian Healy. Peter O’Mahony had to make do with one start and two caps off the bench two Novembers ago but described the month as his most enjoyable ever in national camp. That spoke volumes.

Ireland’s bench on Saturday boasts an almost indecent combination of talent and experience in the likes of Iain Henderson, Jack Conan and Bundee Aki, the latter of that trio making do with a reserve spot that both Garry Ringrose and Robbie Henshaw have had to occupy in the past.

“Now more than ever when you get a chance, if you want to stay in there, you’ve got to play well,” said Murray.

Another chance beckons on Saturday. Few have earned it more.