‘Deadly serious’ reason why Johnny Sexton ‘turned the air blue’ with Conor Murray and how they didn’t ‘really warm to each other’ until the 2013 Lions
Conor Murray and Johnny Sexton in their playing days with Ireland
New Ireland assistant coach Johnny Sexton has recalled the day 14 years ago when he ignited a “war of words” with Conor Murray on the pitch at the Rugby World Cup.
The Irish were involved in a 2011 pool finale against Italy in Dunedin when the legendary fly-half “turned the air blue” with the then-rookie scrum-half.
Murray retired from Test rugby earlier this year and, amid speculation that he will continue his club career overseas after also finishing up at Munster, he spent the recent off-season writing his Cloud Nine autobiography.
The Reach Sport publication, which has a September 11 release date, charts the ins and outs of the 36-year-old’s career across nearly 300 pages, but the five-page foreword written by Sexton immediately grabbed the attention.
“I effed and scotched him…”
In it, Sexton, who recently coached with Andy Farrell’s 2025 British and Irish Lions in Australia, revealed that it wasn’t until he and Murray toured as players with the 2013 Lions before they finally started to warm to each other – two years after they had first played together with Ireland.
“I can’t say that Conor and I got off to the best of starts together, given that we turned the air blue late in the game against Italy at the 2011 World Cup,” Sexton began. “And we barely knew each other at the time. He had broken into the national squad only a few months earlier. He was just beginning his meteoric rise with Munster and Ireland.
“But at that moment in time, I wasn’t really paying him much attention. I had my own business to take care of. I was locked in a battle with Ronan O’Gara for the 10 jersey and I wasn’t winning it. I needed to be making an impression with the game time I was getting.
“And, in all fairness, it would have been hard to make any kind of impression with the sort of ball this fresh-faced young fella threw at me that day in New Zealand. So I got rid of it fairly lively and duly ate the head off him. In fact, I effed and scotched him virtually from one end of the pitch to the other.
“Understandably, he got a bit fed up and started returning the compliment in fairly unparliamentary language too. We were both deadly serious about it in the moment. In hindsight, it was a pantomime.
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“But if anyone had seen us caught up in that war of words in Dunedin, they wouldn’t have predicted that we’d end up forming the longest Irish half-back partnership of all time. I definitely couldn’t have foreseen it. And I had no idea I was about to team up with a player who would go on to become the greatest scrum-half in Irish rugby history.
“After that dodgy start, we really began to click on and off the pitch during the 2013 British and Irish Lions tour of Australia. We still hadn’t really warmed to each other at that stage.
“But on a Lions tour, you tend to gravitate towards the Irish guys even though you might not have been close to them in the Irish squad. You end up going for coffees with them and suddenly they are one of your best buddies when you are a long way from home.”
After their record-setting half-back partnership got properly up and running, the Sexton-Murray combination experienced several highlights with Ireland. What was Sexton’s favourite moment with Murray?
“I suppose the most famous is the last play against France in 2018: 41 phases, the 83rd minute, and the drop goal that sets us up for the Grand Slam season. I didn’t call the ball. I just gave him a nod and he knew straightaway,” Sexton wrote.
“In Paris that day, at the exact moment when everything was on the line, he knew and I knew. Nothing needed to be said. He threw me the perfect pass.”
Sexton then went on to nominate his best Murray performances. “Everyone will have their opinions, but for me his performances against the All Blacks in Chicago in 2016, and in those three Tests for the Lions in New Zealand in 2017, put him at the absolute pinnacle of his profession. In my opinion, there was no one else in the world better than him in that position at that time.”
As was the case with Sexton at fly-half, Murray wasn’t universally loved by fans during his time at Ireland scrum-half, an issue also touched on in the book’s foreword. “The daft thing is, he was so consistently good for so long that some supporters and media started taking him for granted,” wrote Sexton.
“Personally, I don’t think he got the love he should have. There seemed to be a lack of appreciation for a player who was actually setting a higher standard than we had ever seen before from an Irish nine.
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“Part of our strategy in those years under Joe was to use the box kick as an attacking weapon. It was a very successful tool in our armoury. But as is often the way with Irish sport when you have a bit of success, suddenly success isn’t enough anymore. They want something new, or different or a bit flashier.
“I remember hearing occasional groans in the Aviva when Conor would go to the air. But the reason we did it so often was because he was so good at it. In terms of distance and hang time, he was so consistently accurate with it that we usually ended up getting the ball back. He would have heard those groans too, but he was mentally strong enough to ignore them.”
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