Murray backs Best to come good after Twickenham nightmare

At least purgatory doubled up as an earner on Wednesday with Irish players not involved in lineout throwing, lifting and catching wheeled out for sponsors.

The Rory Best event was postponed due to "increased training commitments" but Conor Murray filled the Tadhg Furlong gap at Aviva's mini rugby nations cup launch.

Guess what the scrumhalf was asked about?

“The hookers, the callers, the jumpers are working really hard to fix that,” said Murray in the wake of Saturday’s 57-15 defeat at Twickenham. “That’s the beauty of having a game this week but we’ll wear that for a long time. That was embarrassing.

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“We deserved that beating the way we showed up but I can see us fixing an awful lot of it.

“I don’t think there is a pattern emerging,” added the 30-year-old, despite two heavy defeats to England in 2019 in between the shredding by Wales last March. “I know people will probably want to make that the story but I don’t think so.”

Murray's point holds some water. Ireland fell behind early in both Six Nations defeats and were unable to recover. Last Saturday they were just hammered with a malfunctioning lineout denying them any chance of keeping pace with England.

“The defeats were different. The margins in [the Six Nations] were really small whereas the margins in this game were huge and we were never really in the game.”

Joe Schmidt made an unusual media appearance on Tuesday to stress Best's role as Ireland captain is not being discussed internally while also suggesting the hooker's starting position is no longer secure.

“You all know rugby quite well and the lineout’s not just down to the hooker,” said Murray. “You’ve heard that before, but it isn’t.

“Rory is a guy who is an incredibly strong character. He’s leading this week incredibly strongly, he’s obviously at the forefront of this as our captain and wants to put it right, he’s leading us into this game.

“I don’t know how many turnovers we gave them off lineout [four on Best’s watch] and it just made it a long day. Rory has been through things like this before and it’s only about what’s happening inside our four walls in camp and how we’re going to deal with it. A lot of people will probably blame the hooker because the majority of people probably don’t understand the working parts of a lineout.”

This is true. Iain Henderson was the chief lineout caller. Ultimately, responsibility rests with the incoming Ulster captain. That was how Paul O'Connell used to see it when he ran Ireland's set piece.

"He looked every day of 37 at the weekend," said Best's former team-mate Shane Horgan on Second Captains.

Keith Wood, former Ireland captain and hooker extraordinaire, made the point on Off The Ball that Best must keep leading, keep talking, especially when his own game is suffering.

Murray confirms this has been the case.

“That’s why I respect him so much. He’s mature enough, experienced enough, to deal with that himself and he’s still doing all is individual work like every other player, but he’s also trying to drag everyone else out of this hole. That’s why there’s so much faith in him as a captain because it’s not always going to be rosy.

“There’s going to be times when performances aren’t going quite to plan and you’ve still got to lead. That’s why he’s there and that’s why he’s the man for the job.”

Misplaced concerns from inside the Ireland camp about Best being singled-out by the media can be flipped around; better him than a less experienced player ill-equipped for the glare of criticism.

“Maybe that’s a good thing, that Besty is well able for it, and if it was someone else it could affect them differently and they could go into their shell. Rory will come out and perform, like he always does.

“He always bounces back. He gets it, he knows what people are going to be saying but he’s wise enough to know what actually went wrong and the working parts of it. I’m sure he won’t be happy with how the lineout functioned and even the callers will probably think it was their fault. They’ll get together as a group and get it right.”