He knows his stuff!
The Lions take on Australia in the first Test of the 2025 Tour, at the Suncorp Stadium in Brisbane (kick-off, 11am).
Eight Irish have made the starting XV – Dan Sheehan, Tadhg Furlong, Joe McCarthy, Tadhg Beirne, Jack Conan, Jamison Gibson-Park, James Lowe, Hugo Keenan – with three on the bench – Andrew Porter, Rónan Kelleher, Bundee Aki.
Undoubtedly, one of Ireland’s greatest ever Lions is former Munster scrum-half Conor Murray, who played on three tours, in 2013, 2017, and 2021, winning eight Test caps.
He is also very familiar with Australia head coach Joe Schmidt, whom he played under for the New Zealander’s entire reign as Ireland head coach from 2013-2019, while also coming up against him numerous times when playing for Munster against Leinster, and during Schmidt’s stint with the All Blacks.
Although the Lions are 12-point favourites, Schmidt is famous for identifying weaknesses and exploiting them with specific tactics and calls.
Writing in the Irish Times, Murray believes that Schmidt and his Wallabies side will try a similar game plan to the one used by the All Blacks in their 2023 World Cup quarter-final win against Ireland, where the underdogs ferociously attacked Ireland’s breakdown.
Murray said: “The Wallabies and Joe would like nothing more than to drag the Lions into a similar, energy-sapping scenario. If the Lions are forced to commit more than two players to successive breakdowns, we have ourselves a serious contest.
“The difference between Jamison Gibson-Park getting two-second or five-second ruck ball could be the winning and losing of the series.”
This is also gives insight into why Tadhg Beirne and Tom Curry were selected ahead of the more in-form Ollie Chessum and Jac Morgan/Josh van der Flier.
