Limerick's Ireland scrum-half Conor Murray: 'It's about keeping faith in your own game and backing yourself'

MUNSTER Rugby and Ireland scrum-half Conor Murray turned in a tour de force display as Andy Farrell's side scored a convincing Six Nations Championship win over Wales in Cardiff on Sunday.

Limerick man Murray had been due to start the opening round Six Nations fixture on the replacements' bench, but was called into the starting team on Saturday morning after Jamison Gibson-Park was ruled out through injury.

Murray's eye-catching display came just a few short weeks after the Patrickswell man was left out of Munster's matchday 23 for their Heineken Champions Cup fixture with Northampton at Thomond Park with scrum-halves Craig Casey and Paddy Patterson named in the squad instead.

The Limerick half-back bounced back in some style at the weekend when helping Ireland secure a first win in Cardiff for a decade.

Murray told Virgin Media TV: "It is about keeping faith in your own game and backing yourself and then when you get the chance, taking it. I suppose when we got into camp try and train as well as I could, commit myself fully. It worked out today thank God. 

"There is probably a lot going around about favourites and all that stuff, but like you said I think 2013 was the last time I was here and we won. That is a long time ago, 10 years ago, we we know exactly how hard it is to come here, with the crowd, when Wales get up and running how difficult that momentum is to stop. 

"We spoke about it all week, how difficult it was going to be, how good we were going to have to start especially and I felt we did that. There is stuff we are going to look at that happened later in the game but overall a great win."

Murray said it was only on Saturday morning that he learned for sure that he would be starting the opening round Six Nations game with Wales.

Despite his vast experience - Murray was winning his 101st international cap on Saturday - he admitted to it being a nerve-racking occasion.

Murray admitted that Ireland would have been very happy to beat Wales by a 24-point winning margin.

"Overall, very happy," Murray said.

"If you had given us that score at the start of the day we would have taken it. We had a great opening 20-25 minutes, we knew Wales would come back and that is probably, the end of the first half and the first 20 of the second half, we will have to look at, a little bit frustrating, we couldn't get out of our half, have away a good few penalties so that is the frustrating element, but overall a great start to the campaign."