Conor Murray ‘Disappointed’ With Munster Jeer Boys

Conor Murray has hit out at the “tiny section” of people who jeered Munster towards the end of last weekend’s defeat to Leicester.

Some of the Thomond Park crowd seemed to direct ironic cheers at Ian Keatley when the out-half was withdrawn late in the 31-19 Champions Cup Pool 4 defeat.

The incident led to Munster Rugby releasing a step-by-step RESPECT guide on how supporters should behave at games.

Ahead of the return leg at Welford Road on Sunday Murray was critical of the incident.

“When you do hear that kind of stuff happening it is very disappointing,” the scrum-half told RTÉ Sport.

“It’s something serious; that’s not support in my view.

“No player goes out there or no squad goes out there and tries to play poorly or tries to make mistakes, it’s absolutely not like that.

“We’re a very driven squad, we want to win, we want to follow in the footsteps [of previous winning sides] or make our own bit of history in this jersey.

“Yeah, we focus on ourselves and as a group of players trying to achieve things, we have to be very focused and tight together but at the same time we love our supporters, we enjoy going and playing in Musgrave, in Thomond and further afield.

“99% of the time it’s unbelievable support. It’s just a little bit disappointing and it was only probably a small percentage of people but you don’t go out and try and play poorly and try and make mistakes.

“When a team is playing poorly or things aren’t going well it can be frustrating for us as players on the pitch at times but it’s certainly not intentional.

“I think it’s disappointing at times from those tiny, tiny section of people.”

Anthony Foley’s men are level with Stade Francais in the pool on five points. The Paris outfit host Treviso on Saturday and Murray admits that their European hopes hinge on taking something from Welford Road, with the Tigers sitting on 14 points knowing a win would practically book them a quarter-final berth.

Asked if their collective neck was on the line, the 26-year-old said: “Yeah, 100%. It’s Europe, it’s Munster, it’s something we pride ourselves on.

“One slip-up at home and suddenly we’re in a dogfight.

“We’ve got to go there on Sunday and show that it hurts us a lot to suffer a defeat like that at home and show our fans that we are trying our best to get this back on the road.

“There is a lot of pressure for players to be under so it’s really important we’re real close together this week as a tight group.

“We’re not feeling sorry for ourselves. It’s in our hands still. We have to go over there and attack them.

“It’s one of those rare things. Usually when you play a team you might not get another hop off them for a couple of months or a later stage in the season.

“This is a back-to-back fixture and the way it’s set up you obviously learn a lot about each other: the wrongs and the mistakes and the good things that worked for you, you get to go out and try right some of the wrongs and continue to do some of the good things.

“We get another hop off them this week, which is exactly what this squad needs. When we played well I know we stressed them. We just need to be a bit more clinical, a little bit more accurate and finish things off.

“At the opposite side of that we conceded a few easy scores that are very uncharacteristic and damaged our character a bit, dented our pride a little bit, the way we let them score so easily in Thomond.

“It’s a weird stat. They’ve never lost in Thomond and Munster have won twice over in Welford Road. We can take a lot of faith out of last week. If we play well we can turn this European campaign around.

“We’ve got to right some of the wrongs, some of the sloppy defensive errors. We did make line breaks, we did get in behind them a couple of times, we just didn’t finish it.

“Leicester are going to be better than they were last week and we certainly have to be.

“We’re really buzzing about this game and looking forward to going over and showing people, because they is a lot of people doubting us now [and] what we’re capable of.”

Source: RTE