Racing ready to get Murray ‘off his cloud’
RACING 92 have singled out Conor Murray for special attention in tomorrow’s Champions Cup semi-final showdown in Bordeaux with grizzled flanker Wenceslas Lauret assigned with the task of keeping tabs on the Munster scrum-half.
Murray has been in superb for club and country this season and after playing a hugely influential role in Ireland’s Grand Slam, the Limerick man played a major part in Munster’s against-the-odds quarter-final victory over Toulon — his knowledge of the rules allowing him to pounce for a crucial try.
And, having faced Munster twice already in the pool stages, Racing have identified the Lions star as the biggest threat to their hopes of making the Champions Cup final in Bilbao, with joint head coach Laurent Travers a huge fan of Murray’s allround game.
‘He has a very precise kicking game but he brings a lot more than that to the team,’ said Travers.
‘Murray has a very good pass as well and a lot of experience and it means he is able to see and analyse what the opposing defence is doing and to find the best way to put it in difficulty.
‘He is on a cloud at the moment, we will have to get him back down,’ he added.
He knows the game and is incisive near the line as we say against Toulon but Wenceslas will watch him, Lauret knows his job and is good in his role and knows how to play the rules.
‘We also have Maxime (Machenaud), who has great ability and experience also, it will be a nice duel at scrum-half.’
Lauret, the 17-times capped flanker, was impressed with the cohesion of Murray and his teammates when he faced Grand Slam champions Ireland in the Six Nations opener in February and is expecting a similar approach from Munster tomorrow. ‘Munster have a lot of good players and it is not for nothing if many of them won the Grand Slam with Ireland this year,’ said Lauret. ‘They have a reliable gameplan, the players all ahev well defined tasks to fill in the field and they do it very well. In the Six Nations, Ireland did not necessarily have a flamboyant game but everything they did was perfectly controlled. ‘For us, it is all about possession, if we have the ball we can impose our game and create scoring opportunities,’ added Lauret. ‘We know from facing them this year that we will be facing a strong defence, as we saw in the quarterfinal against Toulon. ‘It will be a close game, we saw that in the pool stages when we lost the first leg in very difficult conditions and then it went our way in the return at the U Arena. ‘This time we have the opportunity to express ourselves in beautiful conditions. Even if we know them well, we must also expect the unexpected,’ stressed Lauret. The Paris outfit are expected to bring around 2,000 supporters to Bordeaux for tomorrow’s clash. Although only a two-hour journey from the French capital by train, rail strikes have disrupted the service to Bordeaux and the travelling support is expected to be limited as a result. The French media are estimating that Munster will have somewhere in the region of 5,000 supporters in the Stade Delmas Chaban but the indications are that there could be many more than that and Johann van Graan’s men may feel like thtey are playing in Thomond Park given the amount of red jerseys and flags like ot be in the stadium tomorrow afternoon.