Irish rugby scrum-half Conor Murray has denied suggestions that the team as experiencing a crisis following their second half collapse against France in the Six Nations on Saturday evening.
Ireland were by far the stronger side in the opening forty minutes and led 13-3 at the break. However they failed to score in the second period and allowed the visitors back into the game. The French scored a late try through Louis Picamoles and Freddie Michalak converted to draw the match.
Similar to the Scottish game Ireland were the better side for most of the match and should have been out of sight before the French got their crucial scores. Murray told the Irish Examiner he felt the side didn’t take advantage of their territorial advantage:
“We wanted to come out this weekend and give a good performance and I think we managed that for most the game. One thing we lacked was probably to tick the scoreboard over a little bit more in the second half, or at all, and it probably would have been a different result.
“They obviously had a chat at halftime and they came out and gave an awful lot more. That’s always going to happen as it did against Wales in the first round.
“Ten minutes into the second half we got really deep in their twenty-two and a couple of phases later we were back on their twenty-two which is quite disappointing and if we had managed to put away that opportunity it probably would have been a different story.”
Ireland have struggled to put teams away when they have had the possession to kill off matches but Murray doesn’t believe that there is a lack of confidence among the players:
“I don’t think people need to freak out, there’s no issue with confidence in the team.
“We’re not going to smash away teams but we’re creating an awful lot, we’re controlling games and controlling territory, there’s just little things.
“We just needed to tick the scoreboard over in the second half and we would have kicked on again, I can’t put my finger on why we didn’t do that.
“But I don’t think we need to panic, the team is in a good place.”
