Glad to have brought it all back home

FRANK MURPHY INTERVIEW: KEITH DUGGANtalks to Connacht's scrumhalf who, since he chose to return from Leicester, has felt at home with the province's growing ambition

FRANK MURPHY is only 28 but he is a veteran of cup rugby. The Cork man’s career already includes appearances in the finals of the Heineken Cup and Premiership, landmark days during his time spent in exile with Leicester.

But as he sat and talked about what the Sportsground will be like tonight, there was no disguising what this means to him.

“I am excited, yeah,” he admits cheerfully. “It is the biggest game since I came to Connacht anyway. This has been a really good run – the Bourgoin game was up there with any of them, as far as I am concerned.

“And this was our goal from the start of the season. We aren’t happy just to be here, appearing in a semi-final. We want to keep this going.”

Murphy is the perfect advertisement for Connacht. In May 2008, he took the calculated gamble of leaving the established, wealthy English club of Leicester to sign for Connacht. He had spent the previous two years building a reputation in the English league, chalking up 46 appearances with the Tigers.

The most audacious of those was at Twickenham against Gloucester in the Premiership final. Harry Ellis, with whom he was vying for a scrumhalf berth, took ill and Murphy not only started, he scored a try.

Other Irishmen on the field for Leicester that day were resident fullback Geordan Murphy, Shane Jennings and Leo Cullen, both of whom would shortly return home to Leinster.

Murphy’s original departure for England was down to the old conundrum of lack of game time. The success of Irish rugby can be something of a curse for young players trying to break through. Coaches do not tamper with winning formulas. At all provinces, game time was scarce.

But in the specialist position at number nine, it was non-existent at Munster – mainly because Peter Stringer was such a model of consistency and competitiveness and, despite his light frame, seemed impervious to the hardest knocks.

Murphy still rates Stringer as one of the key influences in his career but there must have been nights when he watched the senior man through gritted teeth.

Sitting along side Murphy was Eoin Reddan, who took the decision to jump and join Wasps. Murphy won 15 Celtic League appearances for his native province but those games were hard-earned. He felt compelled to walk the same line and in retrospect regards his time in Leicester as a break.

“At Leicester, I was exposed to a lot of good coaches. Andy Goode was playing number 10 then and he was fantastic. He backed me in that he thought I was a good player and he definitely encouraged the coaches to give me game time. It was funny the way it happened.

“There was a backlog of players at Munster and the choice was either go somewhere else or just sit. And I was lucky to get that Leicester contract then. I was there with Eoin Reddan and he left the year before me and obviously did extremely well in England too, which gives an idea of the kind of competition there was at Munster for the one spot.”

But he did get a sense of the complaint that Irish players making a career in England have often levelled: that even though they are playing just across the water, they are off the radar in terms of making an impression at home. That, more than anything, lay behind Murphy’s decision to take up Connacht’s invitation in the spring of 2008.

“Yeah. I knew Connacht rugby. I knew the situation here but what swung it for me was the chance to play rugby for an Irish province. Okay, we weren’t playing Heineken Cup rugby then but we have a chance to do that this year. And the biggest incentive was the idea of getting noticed here in Ireland.

“I mean, in my time at Leicester, I played two seasons there and felt I played some really good rugby as well when we got to the finals. So that did probably influence my decision to come home. There are a lot of quality players in Ireland but I felt I could compete against them and it meant moving to an Irish club to do that.”

In the two years Murphy has been playing for the club, he has made a strong impression. He is, by any comparison, an adventurous number nine, never afraid to exploit a gap of daylight in opposition defences and bringing good variation in his passing.

Off late, he has providing ball to both Ian Keatley and Miah Nikora, whose outhalf talents have been used to great effect by the coaches. Murphy’s main reservations in the beginning were about the scale of the Connacht operation – switching from Welford Road to the Sportsground as a home venue took a bit of getting used to.

But he has grown to love the Galway venue and the core crowd: at this stage he has come to know where people like to stand in the ground and is used to hearing their voices.

“I almost know what part of the ground to look at if I want some support. But they are fantastic, very knowledgeable and they never miss a game.”

The old Connacht siege mentality is, Murphy feels, no longer prevalent in the dressingroom. The old role of the underdog meant that deep down there was an excuse for falling short. This year, they have removed that safety net.

“There has been a ‘them against us’ attitude. But that is something that we are trying to get away from because that carries its own limitations. We are trying to get past that. We are much more concerned now with consistency and other factors.

“But at the same time, just by the nature of the club, there is an awareness that we have to fight for things. And I think this cup run has been where it has come together for us. We started stringing together some good results and more importantly we started playing some really good rugby.”

Tonight, against Toulon and in front of a gala crowd, is the night to showcase that. It ain’t Munster but for Frank Murphy, it is home.