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Conor Murray's 'hurt' over 'crazy' drug test rumours
By Online Editors
Conor Murray says he was deeply 'hurt' by rumours that he'd failed a drugs test.
He spent almost five months out of the game with an unspecified neck injury, which he picked up during Ireland's June tour of Australia. There were unsubstantiated rumours that the Ireland and Munster scrum half had failed a drugs test, which was being covered up.
Murray was speaking to the Limerick Defence Forces earlier this week and was asked what had been the most difficult part of his injury layoff.
“The toughest part of this was the outside rumours that my friends and family would hear. Crazy stuff that I’d failed all sorts of drugs tests and they were just keeping it under wraps and letting me serve my ban. That kind of hurt a little bit,” he said, as reported by the Limerick Leader newspaper.
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Murray elected not to divulge the nature of his injury, which in turn meant the media “had nothing to feed off”.
“They were guessing what was wrong, and thinks I’m going to have to retire. It’s not nice hearing it for yourself, but them your family don’t really know either. They are seeing second hand information. It’s quite tough.”
Murray eventually returned to the pitch at the end of November when he came off the bench in a 32-7 win over Zebre in Parma. He singled out his teammates for getting him through a tough period in his career.
“It was the unity of my team. Munster would hear the same rumours and on Monday morning, they’d be slagging me about it, and make light of it straight away. Having a good team around you and a good head space is really important. It helps me,” he added.
“You hear a lot of players saying they don’t read the media or look at Twitter, but you can’t avoid it. If you don’t see it on your phone, your friends will say it back to you and it will affect you somehow.”
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Latest Comments
Nah, that just needs some more variation. Chip kicks, grubber stabs, all those. Will Jordan showed a pretty good reason why the rush was bad for his link up with BB.
If you have an overlap on a rush defense, they naturally cover out and out and leave a huge gap near the ruck.
It also helps if both teams play the same rules. ARs set the offside line 1m past where the last mans feet were😅
Go to commentsYeah nar, should work for sure. I was just asking why would you do it that way?
It could be achieved by outsourcing all your IP and players to New Zealand, Japan, and America, with a big Super competition between those countries raking it in with all of Australia's best talent to help them at a club level. When there is enough of a following and players coming through internally, and from other international countries (starting out like Australia/without a pro scene), for these high profile clubs to compete without a heavy australian base, then RA could use all the money they'd saved over the decades to turn things around at home and fund 4 super sides of their own that would be good enough to compete.
That sounds like a great model to reset the game in Aus. Take a couple of decades to invest in youth and community networks before trying to become professional again. I just suggest most aussies would be a bit more optimistic they can make it work without the two decades without any pro club rugby bit.
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